Indonesia has an ambitious goal: to reduce marine plastic debris by 70% by 2025. One strategy for achieving that goal is to use technology to prevent waste leakage from land to the ocean through rivers. Today, the Coordinating Ministry for Maritime Affairs and Investment of Indonesia, the Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management of the Netherlands, and The Ocean Cleanup, the international non-profit project developing and scaling technologies to rid the oceans of plastic, signed a joint declaration aimed at expanding river cleanup activities in Indonesia, according to The Ocean Cleanup's release.
Following the expiration of the Arrangement between the Coordinating Ministry for Maritime Affairs of the Republic of Indonesia and the Ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment of the Netherlands on the Pilot Project of Cleaning Up Rivers in the Jakarta Area, signed on July 12, 2017, and with due regard to other existing agreements between the two countries, and considering the positive results of the Joint Research project with Interceptor 001 in Jakarta, both government entities have endorsed the deployment of river clean-up systems in Indonesia by The Ocean Cleanup.
The Ocean Cleanup will seek support from national, regional, and local governments, international institutions, and third parties, including the private sector and potential funders, in achieving the deployment ambitions for additional Interceptor Solutions in the Republic of Indonesia.
For each river clean-up system, implementation arrangements among the relevant implementation agencies will be discussed and agreed upon in due course.
The Ocean Cleanup is an international nonprofit project that develops and scales technologies to rid the world’s oceans of plastic. They aim to achieve this goal by taking a two-pronged approach: stemming the inflow via rivers and cleaning up what has already accumulated in the ocean. For the latter, The Ocean Cleanup develops large-scale systems to efficiently concentrate the plastic for periodic removal. This plastic is tracked and traced through DNV’s chain of custody model to certify claims of origin when recycling it into new products. To close the tap in rivers, The Ocean Cleanup has developed a portfolio of Interceptor Solutions to halt and extract riverine plastic before it reaches the ocean. Founded in 2013 by Boyan Slat, The Ocean Cleanup now employs a broadly multi-disciplined team of approximately 130. The foundation is based in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.