News Marine Litter

14.12.2020

The research program "Plastics in the Environment – Sources, Sinks, Solutions" of the Federal German Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF) consists of 20 joint projects over the period from 2017 to 2022. Models for calculating discharge volumes play an important role in this program. A recently published cross-project synthesis paper provides an overview of the various models, brings together its full area of coverage and shows clearly where gaps still exist – in other words where there is still a lack of model structure and above all a lack of data with which the models can be fed.

14.12.2020

According to calculations from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), an estimated 230,000 tons of plastic litter get into the Mediterranean Sea every year from the 33 countries bordering the Mediterranean alone, predominantly via...

14.12.2020

A further study as part of the MicBin joint project in the research program "Plastic in the Environment" provides clues as to how misinterpretations in microplastic analysis can arise and how they should be dealt with. According to a freely...

14.12.2020

As reported elsewhere in this newsletter, further progress has been made in the commitment to combat granule losses. This at least is shown by the progress report relating to the OCS program of PlasticsEurope, the pan-European association of plastics...

14.12.2020

In October, the new progress report on Operation Clean Sweep (OCS) was published. This is a program from plastics producers in Europe aimed at avoiding granule losses (pellets, flakes and powders). The program is targeted at all players involved in...

14.12.2020

In September, the member states of the European Union agreed on a threshold value for marine litter on coasts. The figure that had been initially developed by the Commission is now valid and is below 20 pieces of waste per 100 meters of coastline....

14.12.2020

In the lead article of Plastics News in October, Stewart Harris from the Chemistry Council in Washington reflects on the cooperation of industry on the subject of marine litter over the past ten years. His list of initiatives and projects begins with...

14.12.2020

By selling sunglasses with frames made of recycled plastic retrieved from the sea, the people responsible for "The Ocean Cleanup" project headed by Dutchman Boyan Slat want to do something different to raise money for the project after the it...

14.12.2020

This international conference took place from 23 to 27 November – not, as planned, on the island of Lanzarote but online. In fact, more than 1,000 people took part in the predominantly virtual conference MICRO 2020. It was the third edition of the...

07.09.2020

The BKV is participating in the joint project "MicBin – Microplastics in Inland Waters" within the BMBF research program "Plastics in the Environment – Sources, Sinks, Solutions". One of the work packages in the MicBin joint project has now been...