Ocean Bound Plastic Recycling — Blue Circle

Challenge

The ocean is one of the most important elements to make our Earth habitable for humankind. However, it is pointed out by the United Nations that our ocean is facing continuous deterioration owing to pollution, building threats to all humankind and marine livings. Plastics without proper collection and recycling, are the largest, most harmful, and most persistent fraction of marine litter, accounting for at least 85% of total marine waste and their pollution could more than double by 2030, stated by From Pollution to Solution: A global assessment of marine litter and plastic pollution by the UN Environment Programme.

Veolia's solution

Veolia Huafei, with its partners in China, has established an ocean prevention group — Blue Circle, to collect plastic wastes from the coastlines and  fishing boats, recycling them into plastic pellets. The whole chain, from collection to pellet sales, is traceable with the help of blockchain technology and the Internet of Things. The recycled pellets produced in this project are called “Blue Miracle” and have been issued OBP certificates by TÜV.

The project not only contributes to ocean environment prevention and reduction of carbon footprints, but also promotes income of the related collectors, who are mostly residents and fishermen by the coastline with spare time.
 

Specific Benefits

• Local Loop
  Collection, sorting, recycling and transformation into finished goods in an area of a few hundreds kilometres wide, thus fostering circularity at the level of a region.
   
• Entire value chain
   
• Dedicated asset
  Strong and comprehensive partnership to build a specific recycling line or facility
   
• Social value
  Veolia participates in the structuring, development and even creation of a waste value chain, emphasising the social benefits for all stakeholders
   
• CO₂ reducing solution
  Veolia commits to target with its client net zero CO2 emissions and focuses on deploying solutions.