AkzoNobel supporting The Ocean Cleanup to purge plastic from rivers

AkzoNobel and The Ocean Cleanup will place garbage collectors in 1,000 rivers over the globe

The latest venture is focused on the Interceptor, a floating device which can extract plastic debris from rivers – preventing them from adding to the build-up in our oceans. Already tested in the Netherlands and Southeast Asia, the plan is to place Interceptors in 1,000 rivers over the next five years.

“As official coatings partner to The Ocean Cleanup, we are fully committed to supporting the fantastic work they are doing to stop the world from drowning in plastic,” says Jean Michel Gauthier, global business director for AkzoNobel’s Marine, Protective and Yacht Coatings business. “As well as supplying marine coatings with a proven track record, our experts were also involved in the design of the Interceptor devices, so we are excited to see them deployed in rivers around the world.”

Capable of extracting up to 50,000 kilogrammes of trash a day, each Interceptor system has a storage capacity of 50cu.m (roughly the volume of ten adult elephants). Four Interceptors have been built to-date; two systems are already operational in Jakarta (Indonesia) and Klang (Malaysia). A third system is in Vietnam to be installed in Can Tho in the Mekong Delta (Vietnam), while the fourth is destined to be deployed in Santo Domingo (Dominican Republic).

The devices feature protective coatings from AkzoNobel’s International product range, notably Intershield 300 – an industry-leading anticorrosive universal primer with an extensive track record of 30 years. The supplied coatings system provides high-performance anti-corrosion, with minimal maintenance required.

“We are proud to be part of this new chapter in The Ocean Cleanup’s ongoing war on plastic waste,” added Gauthier. “We will continue to collaborate and offer all our know-how and expertise to help realise their ambition of cleaning up the world’s oceans and rivers.”

The partnership between AkzoNobel and The Ocean Cleanup was launched in 2017. Technical teams from both parties are continuing to work closely together to develop coatings solutions for the ocean cleaning systems, which are still in the prototype phase. Testing of the devices is continuing in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, with work on the latest prototype already underway.