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Plastics News

21 Nov 2023

Maersk and The Ocean Cleanup Forge Ahead in Plastic Capture

Credit: The Ocean Cleanup

Offshore vessel owner Maersk Supply Service, A.P. Moller – Maersk,  and The Ocean Cleanup have agreed to extend their collaboration to complete the validation of the system by The Ocean Cleanup which is said to be able to consistently capture significant quantities of plastic from the ocean. The Ocean Cleanup, which has established the plastic capture system said the next step for The Ocean Cleanup is to validate the system from an engineering and ecological perspective, allowing it to demonstrate to governments…

19 Oct 2023

Lies, Damn Lies, and Inextinguishable Lore – EV Fires

Copyright structuresxx/AdobeStock

A few weeks ago I was talking to some professional fire fighters and was regaled with EV fire fighting disasters. They told me that EV caught fire all the time, that EV fires were much more dangerous than gasoline fires, and that fire trucks could not carry enough water to put out an EV fire. When I asked if they had fought any EV fires, they told me their information came from reliable sources and then asked me if I would park my Chevy Bolt in my garage. They focused on my Chevy Bolt, since it is widely regarded as a fire hazard.

22 May 2023

Managing Offshore Oil & Gas Through Energy Transition

Copyright bomboman/AdobeStock

Scientists warn that climate change is the greatest peril that humankind has ever faced. Yet oil and gas exploration is set to clock the highest growth for more than a decade this year and next. Protesters cause disruption but, for the moment, hydrocarbon energy underpins life as we know it“Offshore oil and gas production probably matters now more than ever,” said Audun Martinsen. The Rystad Energy Partner and Head of Energy Research told Maritime Reporter & Engineering News.“It…

06 Apr 2023

Western Restrictions on Russian Oil Reshuffle Global Shipping Patterns

©Happyphotons/AdobeStock

Global fuel suppliers are turning to longer and costlier routes that produce more carbon emissions to move their diesel and other products as Western restrictions on Russian cargoes have reshuffled global energy shipping patterns.As a result of the European Union ban on Russian fuel that started on Feb. 5, tankers carrying clean oil products such as gasoline, diesel, jet fuel and naphtha are traveling between 16 and 18 days to bring Russian supplies to Brazil or U.S. cargoes to Europe…

11 Feb 2022

European Group Lifts Funding to $4.6B to Prevent Plastic Pollution in Seas

© Romolo Tavani/AdobeStock

A group of European development banks plan to double its funding for global efforts to stop plastic waste from polluting the world's oceans to 4 billion euros ($4.6 billion).The Clean Oceans Initiative, led by the French and German development banks and the European Investment Bank is the largest such grouping targeting plastic pollution of the sea.Around 8 million tonnes of plastic waste enters the oceans every year, most of it discarded on land or washed into rivers, the group said on Friday…

03 Feb 2022

ABB Expects Supply Bottlenecks to Ease in 2022

© Roland Magnusson / Adobe Stock

ABB expects supply chain bottlenecks to ease during 2022, the Swiss engineering group said on Thursday, after shortages of semiconductors hurt its ability to deliver increasing orders during the fourth quarter.The maker of fast chargers for electric vehicles and industrial drives for factories reported a 21% jump in orders as demand surged from machine builders, food manufacturers and general industry.But revenues grew by only 8% as ABB battled shortages of key components such as semiconductor chips that have hit the rest of industry.

09 Jan 2022

Opinion: Let's Get the Plastic Out of Our Lives (& Waterways)

Copyright Romolo Tavani/AdobeStock

A confession. I'm part of a very big problem that's easy to ignore. Last year, I contributed the U.S. average-per-person 300 pounds of plastic garbage to wherever it went after convenient curbside pickup. So out of sight, out of mind, right? Not really, but does it matter? Yes, it does.In a fascinating recent report, the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine politely told us that we're choking ourselves to death on manufactured plastic waste and that 80% of the harmful plastic in the ocean comes from land-based sources.It's the micro-plastics…

19 Nov 2021

New Report Tracks Sources of Marine Litter

(Photo: GESMAP)

The sources and impact of sea-based marine litter form the focus of a new report by the Group of Experts on the Scientific Aspects of Marine Environmental Protection (GESAMP), an advisory body to the United Nations sponsored by 10 UN entities. The report outlines the various sources of marine litter and the impact and assesses the current availability of data and identifies knowledge gaps for the main categories of sea-based sources of marine plastic litter. The Working Group was established by GESAMP…

15 Nov 2021

Marine Concept Design: Ocean "Plastic Harvester" Completes Prototype Testing

Image courtesty Our Cleaner Planet

Our Cleaner Planet, a non-profit startup with an 'innovative technique to remove plastics from our oceans', said it has completed prototype testing of its first plastic harvester and is now ready to move forward with larger unit testing. The program is scheduled to launch the first of its full-sized, plastic harvesters into ocean operation in 2025.“The test parameters for our 1:164-scale prototype were set up to evaluate speed and control and the first stage of the filtration process,” said Pat Marshall, founder of Our Cleaner Planet.

01 Oct 2021

Academia’s Climate Change Challenge is Far from Academic

Mesobot, an underwater robot capable of tracking and recording high-resolution images of slow-moving and fragile zooplankton, gelatinous animals, and particles, is providing researchers with deeper insight into the vast mid-ocean region known as the twilight zone. © Evan Kovacs/©Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

Highlighted in Marine Technology Reporter's MTR100 is the work and technology ongoing in the halls of academia. The most recent report released by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change emphasized our warming planet, an expected announcement for many in the scientific community. Faced with the confirmation that human activities have caused an increase in global temperatures, research has turned to seeking answers in the planet’s natural systems. How does each part of the global carbon cycle work and how may it be impacted by the changing climate?

16 Sep 2021

Ocean Cleanup Struggles to Fulfill Promise to Scoop Up Plastic at Sea

Credit: Maersk Supply Service (File Photo)

Docked at a Canadian port, crew members returned from a test run of the Ocean Cleanup's system to rid the Pacific of plastic trash were thrilled by the meager results — even as marine scientists and other ocean experts doubted the effort could succeed.The non-profit, launched in 2013 amid buoyant media coverage, hopes to clear 90% of floating plastic from the world's oceans by 2040. But the group's own best-case scenario — still likely years away — envisions removing 20,000 tonnes a year from the North Pacific…

14 Sep 2021

Oil Output, Vessel Traffic Halted as Nicholas Lashes Texas

© JACoulter / Adobe Stock

Hurricane Nicholas on Tuesday took another swipe at U.S. Gulf Coast energy facilities, cutting offshore oil and gas output gradually recovering from the last storm and disrupting power to onshore pipeline, gas and chemical plants.Royal Dutch Shell halted production its Perdido offshore oil platform due to heavy winds, and U.S. liquefied natural gas producer Freeport LNG said processing at its Texas coast facility was halted, likely due to a power outage.Power losses briefly cut Colonial Pipeline's main gasoline and diesel lines out of Houston…

18 Aug 2021

UK Regulator Asked to Sanction Carnival Over Climate Disclosures

© NAN / Adobe Stock

Britain’s markets regulator has been urged to sanction cruise ship company Carnival and food delivery company Just Eat Takeaway.com for poor disclosures in a complaint seen by Reuters.Both companies have breached their legal obligations by failing to adequately tell investors the risk climate change poses to their businesses, legal NGO ClientEarth said.While the Financial Conduct Authority has yet to sanction a company over its climate disclosures, the latest ClientEarth complaint…

04 Jun 2021

Sri Lankan Fishermen 'Helpless' After Ship Sinking Leads to Fishing Ban

X-Press Pearl image caught earlier this week - Credit: Sri Lanka Port Authority

Sri Lankan fishermen say they feel helpless after a cargo ship carrying tonnes of chemicals and plastics caught fire and later sank, resulting in a ban on fishing along an 80 km (50 mile) stretch of the island nation's west coast.The Singapore-registered MV X-Press Pearl, carrying 1,486 containers, including 25 tonnes of nitric acid along with other chemicals and cosmetics, was anchored offshore when a fire erupted after an explosion on May 20.Flaming containers filled with billions…

26 Mar 2021

The Suez Canal: A Vital Transit Route With an Ancient History

(Photo: BlackSky)

The Suez Canal, blocked by a giant container ship that ran aground on Tuesday, is the quickest sea route between Asia and Europe and about 15% of global shipping traffic moves through it.The 193-km (120-mile) waterway, run by the state-owned Suez Canal Authority, is a vital source of foreign currency for Egypt.How much oil goes through the canal?Of the 39.2 million barrels per day (bpd) of crude oil imported by seaborne methods in 2020, 1.74 million bpd went through the Suez Canal…

05 Feb 2021

VIDEO: Across the Ocean & Up the Mountain with Erden Eruc

Photo Courtesy Erden Eruc

Erden Eruc is a man on a ‘human-powered’ mission, a mission which Elliott Bay Design Group recently assisted with donated design services as he plans for the next leg of his “Six Summits Project.” Next up: a solo row across the Pacific Ocean, a bike ride to Tibet and climbing Mt. Everest.A Seattle resident, Erden Eruc’s solo circumnavigation by human power quest, which started as a quiet obsession in the late 1990s, became a life mission following the death of Göran Kropp, who died while rock climbing with Eruc in September of 2002.

18 Jan 2021

New Study Finds Polyester Fibers Throughout the Arctic Ocean

The Canadian Coast Guard Ship Louis S. St. Laurent transiting the Arctic Ocean. This expedition between Norway and Canada collected seawater samples for microplastics analysis. (Photo: Arthi Ramachandra / Fisheries and Oceans Canada)

The Arctic has long proven to be a barometer of the health of our planet. This remote part of the world faces unprecedented environmental assaults, as climate change and industrial chemicals threaten a way of life for Inuit and other Indigenous and northern communities that rely heavily on seafood and marine mammals for food.But who would have imagined that the clothes we wear might add to this onslaught? Evidence increasingly shows that tiny synthetic fibers are permeating the Arctic Ocean and finding their way into zooplankton…

12 Jan 2021

Tech File: H-Glide Structural Bearings for Extreme Environs

Port loading infrastructure is among the applications for which H-glide technology is suitable. Photo: Hercules Engineering

Custom-fabricated structural bearings are being introduced by Hercules Engineering for extremely high stress applications in structures requiring outstanding load-bearing performance, even in compact or wet spaces in applications such as ports loaders, land and marine logistics and resources exploration and processing structures.The latest Herculon structural bearings are manufactured by integrating H-Glide fiber-reinforced composite pads sliding on 2B finish stainless steel to achieve an exceptionally low sliding coefficient of friction compared with other engineering bearing materials…

02 Dec 2020

WMU PhD Candidate Ambrose Wins Goldman Environmental Prize

Kristal Ambrose (Photo: WMU)

Kristal Ambrose, a PD candidate at the World Maritime University, is the recipient of the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize 2020. The award is the world’s foremost environmental prize and honors outstanding environmental activism through community and citizen participation on critical sustainability issues facing the planet.Ambrose founded the Bahamas Plastic Movement in 2013 to develop solutions to plastic pollution and to educate young people on the importance of a clean and healthy ocean.

24 Aug 2020

How to Recycle a Ship Safely and Sustainably

© saintmichel85 / Adobe Stock

Shipbreaking is among the most dangerous jobs in the world, according to the International Labor Organization. This is the process of breaking up huge old ships into spare parts. It almost always happens in developing countries and comes with an unacceptably high level of fatalities, injuries and work-related diseases.In November 2016, 17 people were killed in a series of explosions on an oil tanker at a shipbreaking yard in Gadani, Pakistan. In 2019 alone, it was reported that 26 shipbreakers died in Bangladesh.

07 Aug 2020

The Beirut Explosion Was Exceptional but Events Leading up to It Were Not

(UN Photo/Pasqual Gorriz)

At the time of writing at least 100 people have lost their lives and a further 4,000 have been wounded following an explosion in the Port of Beirut. While the actual cause remains uncertain, the tragedy calls to attention the tremendous consequences of a lack of port security.The explosion, on August 4, at around 6 p.m. local time, appears to have been fueled by 2,750 tons of the highly reactive chemical ammonium nitrate. The chemical had been the cargo on a ship, the the MV Rhosus, which entered the port at Beirut in 2013 due to a lack of seaworthiness and was prohibited from sailing.

22 Jul 2020

Maersk to Stop Taking Solid Waste Shipments to China

Image Credit: VanderWolf Images/AdobeStock

Denmark's A.P. Moller-Maersk, the world's top container shipping firm, said on Wednesday it would stop accepting solid waste shipments bound for China and Hong Kong from September."We sent out a customer advisory on July 20th, telling customers that solid waste acceptance will be stopped by Maersk into the destinations of Chinese Mainland and Hong Kong, effective September 1st, 2020," the company said in a statement.China began tightening restrictions on scrap commodities as part…

07 Jul 2020

OVI: 103 Tons of Garbage Removed From North Pacific Gyre

Fishing nets and debris being removed from the North Pacific Gyre by the crew of S/V KWAI. © Ocean Voyages Institute

Ocean Voyages Institute’s marine plastic recovery vessel, S/V KWAI, docked at the port of Honolulu at the end of June after a 48-day expedition successfully removing 103 tons (206,000 lbs.) of fishing nets and consumer plastics from the North Pacific Subtropical Convergence Zone (more commonly known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch or Gyre).The Pacific Gyre, located halfway between Hawaii and California, is the largest area with the most plastic, of the five major open ocean plastic accumulation regions…

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