CLAIM
The Horizon 2020 project entitled “Cleaning litter by developing and Applying Innovative Methods in European Seas”, acronym CLAIM, seeks new strategies focusing on marine plastic litter. Coordinated by HCMR, brings together nineteen institutions, six of which are SMEs, from across Europe, Lebanon and Tunisia.
It develops five innovative cleaning technologies and approaches, targeting the prevention and in situ management of visible (macroplastics >5mm) and invisible (micro <5 mm up to 1 μm and nanoplastics < 1 μm) marine litter at their point of introduction to the marine environment (e.g. river runoff and waste water treatment plants) in the Mediterranean and the Baltic seas. Right after an effective pre-filtering system has sorted and collected litter, a photocatalytic nanocoating device will degrade microplastics in wastewater treatment plants. At river mouths, innovative floating barriers has been already developed to collect and monitor visible litter, while mounted on ships or placed in ports and marinas, a small-scale thermal treatment device (pyrolizer) will be used to turn collected litter intro energy powering ships and heating up ports. A CLAIM network of FerryBox systems will operate on ships in the Baltic, West & East Mediterranean mounted with an automated seawater sampling device & passive flow-through filtering system. The project will facilitate better governance of the issue of marine litter by providing tools such as new models and concentration maps to give insights into the distribution of macroplastics and microplastics and scenarios to determine the efficiency of CLAIM’s technologies.
New business models will be introduced to enhance the economic feasibility of upscaling the proposed innovations. An ecosystem approach will guide the project through the evaluation of the potential benefit from the proposed litter cleaning methods to ecosystem services and human well-being.
Geographic Coverage: 13 EU countries, Tunisia and Lebanon
Duration: 11/2017 -04/2022
Project website: http://www.claim-h2020project.eu/