Digital MarineLitter Passport (DMP) seeks to provide a solution to the main challenges of passive fishing projects for marine litter, integrating and making visible all the agents in the waste collection and transformation chain, increasing the link between the fishing community and promoting a higher recycling rate of marine litter and the traceability of all plastic waste fractions.
Through technology and with a human-centered design methodology, the project seeks to understand the social and environmental impact of this type of project, collecting data throughout the supply chain to share it along complete value chains.
In this way, all actors, including the end consumers of recycled products, will be able to better understand the materials and products they use and their built-in environmental and social impact.
This pilot will allow the work of fishermen in the collection of marine litter and the importance of the Circular Economy in production processes to be communicated in a more transparent way.
The DMP project was born from the experience of the Ecoalf Foundation in the design and implementation of marine litter collection projects, which began in 2015 with the aim of recovering the waste that is destroying the oceans thanks to the collaboration of the fishing sector, demonstrating that this waste can constitute a valuable raw material and become high-quality products.
During these years, several challenges have been identified that are common to all marine litter collection projects and that DMP seeks to address: to make the work of fishermen visible and increase their link with the project, introducing the measurement of the social and environmental impact of their work; maximise the amount of marine litter collected and recycled and integrate the traceability of that waste along the recycling and transformation value chain.
To this end, the project proposes to implement a platform that will provide visibility and transparency in all steps of the marine litter collection and recycling chain through blockchain technology, ensuring that when recycled materials are transformed into new products, the consumer can understand the origin of the materials and make consumption decisions based on environmental and social impact.
In order to begin this traceability at the source and understand and transfer to the public the environmental impact of marine litter, it is essential to strengthen the existing relationship with the fishing community.
Therefore, through the experience of itwillbe, a Spanish development cooperation NGO that seeks to solve social challenges through innovation and technology, we seek to link the sector and raise awareness of the importance of their role as social dynamizers so that they are agents of change and raise awareness among citizens about the importance of caring for our seas; and to begin to weave a digital network or community where their contribution to the clean-up of the oceans can be valued.
In parallel, DMP seeks to increase the amount of recycled marine litter, introducing as much of this material into the final product and maintaining optimal properties for industrial use. In this regard, AIMPLAS, the Plastics Technology Institute with more than 30 years of experience in innovation in materials, will implement a mechanical recycling pilot in which marine litter will be conditioned to obtain a format that facilitates subsequent transformation processes.
In this way, we will be able to introduce the use of marine litter in various industrial sectors, facilitating the transition to the Circular Economy.