Marine litter is among the most urgent global pollution issues. Marine scientist Nikoleta Bellou and her team at Helmholtz-Zentrum Hereon have published an overview study of solutions for prevention, monitoring, and removal in the renowned scientific journal Nature Sustainability. They found that reducing ocean pollution requires more support, integration, and creative political decisiveness. Plastic bottles drifting in the sea; bags in the stomachs of turtles; COVID-19 masks dancing in the surf: few images are as unpleasant to look at as those that show the contamination of our oceans. And few environmental issues are as urgent and as present in the public awareness. “Most people have an emotional connection to the sea. They think of ocean pollution as an attack on a place they long for,“ said Nikoleta Bellou, marine scientist at Hereon’s Institute of Coastal System – Analysis and Modeling. Between 1990 and 2015 alone, an estimated 100 million metric tons of mostly plastic waste entered the oceans. For that instance, the study fits to the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development, which started this year to emphasize a sustainable use of the seas. The new overview study is the first to document the bulk of existing solutions—technologies as well as methods—regarding the prevention, monitoring, and cleanup with an innovative approach. With a view to the future, Nikoleta Bellou and together with an international team, namely Camilo A. Arrieta-Giron, João Canning-Clode, Chiara Gambardella, Konstantinos Karantzalos, Stephanie Kemna, Carsten Lemmen, and João Monteiro, categorized and analyzed solutions from around the world. Led by Helmholtz-Zentrum Hereon, co-authors participants included the National Research Council of Italy, the Marine Environmental Sciences Centre, the National Technical University of Athens, the Smithsonian Institution, and Maritime Robotics.
Exploring all categories
Reference: “Global assessment of innovative solutions to tackle marine litter” by Nikoleta Bellou, Chiara Gambardella, Konstantinos Karantzalos, João Gama Monteiro, João Canning-Clode, Stephanie Kemna, Camilo A. Arrieta-Giron and Carsten Lemmen, 10 June 2021, Nature Sustainability.DOI: 10.1038/s41893-021-00726-2 To date, many developers have been using similar technological approaches, but there are indications that the next generation will increasingly rely on a wide variety of solutions. More and more, they will integrate machine learning, robotics, automation, big data analyses, and modeling. While the scientific community seems to focus mainly on monitoring and NGOs mostly emphasize prevention, most cleanup solutions result from the cooperation of different players, the study claims.
