The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and The Ocean Cleanup today signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to collaborate on eliminating plastic pollution in oceans and rivers around the globe.
The goal of the partnership is to reduce leakages of plastics into marine ecosystems by boosting policies and behavior change aimed at advancing sound plastic waste management systems and reducing overall plastic pollution, and accelerating the deployment of interception technologies in rivers to end marine plastic pollution.
Plastic pollution poses an existential threat to the health of the world’s oceans and the billions of people who depend on marine resources for food and income. Partnerships play a critical role in addressing this complex global challenge.
This new partnership comes at a critical time as negotiations for an international legally binding instrument on plastic pollution, including in the marine environment, are taking shape.
UNDP is the leading United Nations organization fighting to end the injustice of poverty, inequality, and climate change.
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 140. The foundation is based in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.