High Tech Clean-Ups: No Solution to Ocean Plastic Pollution

What are plastic clean-up devices?

Ocean – and river – plastic clean-up devices and technologies are large-scale (or intended to become large-scale) and often unsupervised efforts to remediate areas impacted by plastic pollution by collecting and removing plastics from these areas. Though they exist in many sizes and forms, they have in common that they rely on technology-intensive methods (including drones, robots, satellites, and other high-tech infrastructure and machinery) to collect plastic from the aquatic environment and bring it on land.

Warnings against the easy solution of high-tech clean-ups

OceanCare together with the Environmental Investigation Agency in November 2023 published an in-depth briefing on ocean clean-ups. The conclusions of this assessment are clear: such clean-ups are highly problematic on many levels. We do not stand alone with our concerns. Almost simultaneously but independently from our briefing, a scientific commentary by a group of international researchers published in One Earth, explicitly warned about the fallacy of plastic clean-up technology. And also a report by the Danish Ministry of the Environment from October 2023 shows itself critical about such technologies.

Criticism can essentially be summarised under four categories: these technologies have (1) considerable negative environmental impacts, they (2) are inefficient and very capital intensive, (3) they show little consideration about how to deal with the collected plastic waste, and (4) they are prone to greenwashing.

Environmental impacts of tech-fixes

Clean-up devices little to not distinguish between waste and aquatic life and have considerable negative impacts on the ecosystem (marine or riverine) in which they operate.

While at first sight these clean-ups could seem a convenient solution to free the aquatic environment from plastic, in reality they can do much harm to the environment in which they operate and pose a threat to the very same species and ecosystems they say to help. One major concern is that plastic and marine life often accumulate in the same areas. Yet, clean-up technologies do not discriminate between aquatic life, organic matter, and plastic. This leads to high bycatch and the removal of much needed organic material (wood debris, plants).

Besides clean-up technologies can turn out to be climate intensive. Especially vessel-based clean-up technologies emit greenhouse gases through the burning of fuel. Heavily scaling up such clean-up would have significant climate implications. Furthermore, these clean-ups (certainly if they were to be scaled up) rely on considerable amounts of raw materials and energy-intensive infrastructure to operate.

Inefficient and capital intensive

Existing clean-up technologies have proven to be inefficient and very capital intensive. In that sense, any considerable scale-up is not realistic without the further injection of high amounts of capital. Money that could be much better used elsewhere.

So far, clean-up projects are still very small compared to the scale they would need to realise the level of plastic collection they promise. Remediation of plastic pollution through clean-ups at a global level would require scaling to an unprecedented level. Yet, already today clean-ups turn out to be much less efficient and effective in catching meaningful amounts of plastics waste than they are announced to do.

This notwithstanding the high investments put into their deployment. In this regard, a study on the cost and effectiveness of various solutions to plastic pollution found that interventions increase in cost the further down the pollution chain they intervene. End-of-pipe collection technologies proved to be the least cost-effective, while policy tools to prevent plastic consumption were the most cost-effective measures.

What to do with the collected plastic waste?

So far, none of the existing high-tech clean-up project has outlined a credible plan for how it intends to deal with all the plastic waste it collects.

Getting the plastic out of the water is one thing, appropriately taking care of it another. Collected waste will have to enter the waste stream and face the same management challenges as any other plastic waste. It should be avoided that through mismanagement, the plastic yet again ends up in waterways, and eventually the ocean.

While this is self-evident, overall, clean-up providers are astonishingly vague about what they do with the waste they bring on land, let alone what they would do with it if their project were to be scaled-up. But, to avoid renewed pollution by recovered plastic waste, post-collection management must be an integral part of the clean-up process from the outset. Before even starting the clean-up, it should be entirely clear and transparent what happens with the collected plastic, and a comprehensive waste management plan must be in place.

Greenwash - Cleanwash

Clean-up projects are a handy tool for big polluters to distracting from the real problem. They offer an easy way to show their apparent commitment to solving the plastic crisis.

Large-scale, technology-intensive clean-ups need considerable budgets. This makes them prone to greenwashing. They offer a catchy opportunity to those who finance them to show their ‘green face’ while at the same time continue business as usual. It is to be noted that many high-profile clean-up operations are funded by the very companies responsible for the products causing plastic pollution in the first place.

Through public relations and marketing these companies instrumentalise their support for these initiatives to show the public how, seemingly, they are taking their responsibility in solving the plastic crisis. However, by focussing on Instagram-ready, cool-looking initiatives, they aim to distract public attention away from concrete upstream policy measures to reduce production, promote reuse and refill, or to improve product design. Measures which are much more effective and ultimately cost society less, but do not agree with their business-model of ever more plastic.

Recommendations

Cleanup activities should be part of a comprehensive approach to ending plastic pollution across the full lifecycle of plastics. Yet, this should not include the promotion of disruptive clean-up technologies. Such high-tech, capital intensive, and non-discriminatory clean-ups should be considered a tool of last resort, to be applied with caution and according to clearly established guidelines, in cases where the need of such cleanup clearly outweigh the disadvantages. For instance, in areas where the aggregation of plastic waste is of such amount that it is making any meaningfully functional ecosystem practically impossible. Or, where the risks from the plastic pollution to local communities, biodiversity, health, safety… requires urgent action.

The relevant guidelines should rely on a comprehensive assessment of the circumstances in which the cleanup technology is to be deployed. They should be developed based on sound criteria and overviewed independently from the clean-up technology provider and user. They should provide for transparent reporting on clean-up technologies (including financing) and demand for an elaborated post-collection waste management plan. And, most of all, they should integrate potential clean-up in a comprehensive policy to really tackling the plastic crisis from the roots on, which means first and foremost: reducing plastic production and consumption.

More information

• Report Clean-Ups or Clean Washing about the problem with clean-up tech
• Press Release to Report
• Article in Dialogue
• Video by Business insider showing the truth about ocean plastic