Saving the Oceans - Technology Battles Plastic Pollution

Breakthrough Technologies Making Unrecyclable Packaging Recyclable

Saving the Oceans
8 million tons of plastic enter the ocean every year  Yet the 3 biggest global cleanups deal with only 1/2% of that volume.  It's a plastic pollution crisis and there's an urgent need for innovative systemic solutions.

World Economic Forum Incubator and Launch Pad
The World Economic Forum and several other organizations have awarded $1million to 5 new recyclable and compostable packaging solutions to stop plastic from becoming waste.  It's an incubator program running into 2019, in collaboration with Think Beyond Plastics, to make these innovations marketable at scale.

Making Unrecyclable Packaging Recyclable
Here are 2 winners in the Unrecyclable to Recyclable packaging category:

• The University of Pittsburg:  The Pitt team applies nano-engineering to create a recyclable material that can replace very complex, multi-layered packaging that is unrecyclable.  This mirrors the way nature uses a few molecular building blocks to create a huge variety of materials.
• Aronax Technologies of Spain:  Aronax is creating a magnetic additive that can be applied to a material, creating better air and moisture insulation.  It's great to protect fragile items like coffee and medical products.  And, most importantly it's recyclable.

Innovative, systemic solutions like these are needed to save our oceans and the World Economic Forum is helping to lead the way.