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Join on Telegram Rabat – With plastic pollution in the coastal ocean becoming an alarming issue that can be toxic to wildlife and harmful to humans as well, it is crucial to work collectively to tackle environmental issues that threaten the world’s well being.
Biofabrik, a German company that develops technologies to solve critical environmental problems in a sustainable way, held a beach cleanup last month in Imsouane on the outskirts of Agadir to raise awareness about plastic waste pollution in Morocco.
The cleanup, which was organized in collaboration with the local hotel Olo Surf & Nature and Morocco’s Mika organization, also took an educational dimension with speakers talking about how to reduce ocean waste and providing the event’s attendees with possible solutions.
With the participation of over 25 people, the beach cleanup helped collect 84 bags of waste, a total of 406kg.
In an interview with Morocco World News, Leonhard Meitner from Biofabrik company said that it took them over two and a half hours to finish cleaning an area of over 1.000 m2.
The participants then had to divide the trash into a plastic one which amounted to 151kg and plastic and aluminum which weighed 255kg.
When asked about their location choice, Meitner stressed that as a traveler who spent a few months in southern Morocco, he noticed that plastic pollution is a serious problem in the Souss-Massa region.
This observation led his company to organize their first beach cleanup in Morocco, he said, adding: “Locals have really appreciated what we did. A lot of people came to us and thanked us for the gesture.”
As part of the global recycling industry, Biofabrik considers Morocco as “a great possible location for the chemical recycling plants to close the plastic loop worldwide,” Meitner noted.
Transforming plastic waste into recycling oil
The company has developed “WASTX,” a technology that transforms plastic waste into recycling oil. Meitner stressed that the recycling goes through different steps, with an aim to make environmental protection profitable.
WASTX, which Meitner’s company has been developing for over seven years, is a promising solution for the global plastic waste issues as it enables the transformation of problematic plastic waste into a recycling oil that gets back into the raw material cycle.
The plastic then becomes a valuable product. Meitner underlined, “we don’t burn the plastic waste. The gas that is being produced is utilized to cover the electricity requirements of the WASTX plant, so little CO2 emissions are being produced.”
He detailed, “After cutting the plastic down to a certain size, the plastic waste enters the core process fully automatically while excluding oxygen, through this method, we don’t burn the waste but make the hydrocarbon component of the plastic decompose.”
The WASTX plant is distributed in 37 countries so far, and Meitner stressed that they aim to introduce the technology to Morocco in the near future.
Of the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on plastic waste pollution, he highlighted that the pandemic has brought a positive outcome for the environment as “less products were produced, and less were consumed than usual.”
Although the pandemic imposed drastic challenges related to health and economy, it has posed a positive impact on the environment as it helped in temporarily improving air quality, reducing noise pollution, and lowering greenhouse gas emissions.
With an eye on achieving bio recycling technology in a way that closes the plastic loop and achieves a circular economy, the company uses the synergy effects of the sustainable development goals (SDGs) and collaborates with differents organizations worldwide to tackle food and waste issues by optimizing its technology to combat climate change.
Read Also: Coastal Erosion Is Threatening Livelihoods In Morocco
