It’s a well-known fact to anyone interested in the environment and the oceans: 80% of marine pollution comes from the land.
Plastic waste is the largest, most harmful and most persistent fraction of this pollution, accounting for at least 85% of the total that is released into the oceans.
The main source of land-based plastic entering marine environments? Water streams. Rivers carry the waste to the littoral zone, where it will gradually disperse, drift offshore, sink, degrade and fragment, becoming more or less irretrievable.
According to one of the recent reference studies on the subject, conducted by Laurent Lebreton, member of our International Scientific Adisory Board and scientific director of the Dutch NGO Ocean Cleanup, 1,000 rivers in the world are responsible for nearly 80% of annual global river plastic emissions.
The conclusion is obvious: to reduce ocean pollution, we must capture the incoming flow of plastic waste in the oceans, by collecting it in rivers as well, in addition to collecting waste in other areas of high concentration such as coastal areas, mouths, mangroves, etc.
It is with this objective in mind that the MOBULA 8, our multi-purpose cleanup boat designed with the French SME EFINOR Sea Cleaner, was conceived. It arrived a few weeks ago in Benoa, on the island of Bali, to participate in the national strategy set up by Indonesia to reduce plastic pollution. We will tell you more about its cleaning operations soon.