PlasticsEurope (Brussels / Belgium; www.plasticseurope.org) and supporting member companies of "Operation Clean Sweep" (OCS; www.opcleansweep.org), an international programme to help prevent resin pellets from getting into the marine environment, present results of their ongoing activities in the new "Operation Clean Sweep Report 2017".

The "Zero Pellet Loss" initiative was launched in 2013 by PlasticsEurope, to raise awareness among employees at manufacturing plants on how to properly manage pellets and other particles at each step of the production and supply chain. In 2015, Zero Pellet Loss was integrated Europe-wide into the global OCS programme. The programme has identified sources of pellet spills, during production, compounding, conversion, transport and recycling, as well as steps to prevent spills at worksites, such as publishing internal procedures, employee training, auditing and making worksite improvements. To date, more than half of PlasticsEurope’s members have signed the OCS pledge, and 70 plastics industry associations in 35 countries have joined over 260 projects. This includes the 28 EU member countries, Switzerland, Norway and Turkey.

PlasticsEurope targets 100%-member engagement in the OCS programme by the end of 2017. It also plans to develop a reporting scheme for collecting relevant and comparable information from all signed members. An updated OCS report is planned to be published in 2018.

Waste Free Oceans (WFO, Brussels / Belgium; www.wastefreeoceans.org) has also aimed to tackle plastic waste in rivers, which are a major source of marine litter. According to a study done by researchers at the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ, Leipzig / Germany; www.ufz.de), plastic waste from river output into the seas is estimated to range between 410,000 t/y to 4m t/y worldwide, with the top 10 rivers carrying the largest amounts accounting for 88-95% of the total global volume of plastics in the oceans. "Halving the plastic input from the catchment areas of these rivers would already be a major success," says the lead author of the study Christian Schmidt.

Currently, WFO is setting up a pilot project by installing its trash catcher (see Plasteurope.com of 22.09.2017) in a river channel in Mumbai, Maharashtra / India, which feeds into the Arabian Sea. The NGO sees its potential as a long-term solution to waste entering the ocean in the Mumbai area, as well as for other polluted large rivers around the world.

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PlasticsEurope's "Operation Clean Sweep Report 2017" as a PDF file