Wednesday 20th March 5.15pm – ERI Castle Street, Thurso
A seminar by Dr Julien Moreau and Dr Joan D’Arcy from Plastic@Bay
Based in Durness (northwest Scotland) Plastic@Bay tries to apply the principles of circular economy to marine plastic pollution – particularly to fishing nets and ropes. The project is supported by grants from SSE Sustainable Development Fund, The Highland and Moray Fisheries Local Action Group (FLAG) and private donations. Our pilot project, the Plastic Lab, aims to remove plastic pollution from local beaches, and recycle them into useful saleable objects e.g. 3D printer filaments, fencing, furniture, and jewellery. The net profits are used for plastic removal, surveying pollution, education, staff, and overheads.
The Lab will allow for measuring microplastics in beach sand and seawater, a plastic recycling machine, a retail area, and an information centre on plastic pollution. Understanding and predicting the nature and position of plastic pollution in our oceans is a challenge that needs to be addressed today. The research carried out by Plastic@Bay intends to quantify at high frequency the flux and the stocks of plastic locally. The idea is to better understand the source to sink relations of the pollution in an environment not biased by the vicinity of urban developments. Our intention is to make the area around Durness a calibration point for forward and inverse simulations of plastic pollution across coastal environments.
