In addition to being true floating laboratories and the best ambassadors of the ecological transition, our ships are also exceptional platforms for exchange on relevant solutions to fight the various Ocean scourges. Our worldwide Odysseys allow us to get the message across to a wide audience. Working together on the same boat, political and industrial decision-makers, NGOs and scientists immerse themselves in the marine world to build a healthy and sustainable future for the Ocean.
Our numerous stopovers also allow us to carry out field surveys to better understand local specificities, bring together the right players, and facilitate the implementation of solutions.
REDUCING OUR RELIANCE ON PLASTIC
Changing our production and consumption patterns of plastic products, building reuse models over single use, and reducing plastic waste as much as possible are top priorities. Making easy recyclable plastic products and ensuring their non-toxicity is an urgent commitment that must be made together by the many actors in the plastic production chain.
Since its inception and as part of its first two Odysseys, R4W has actively engaged the public and decision-makers in the different existing ways to end our addiction to plastic and has explained why it is urgent to do it as soon as possible.
R4W has also joined the coalition of NGOs working at the UN level to secure an ambitious international treaty against plastic pollution. This step is essential to ensure that appropriate and effective solutions are put in place to combat the many devastating impacts of plastic on a global scale.
GIVING VALUE TO PLASTIC WASTE AS AN INCENTIVE FOR ITS COLLECTION
To bring a solution to non-recyclable plastics end-of-life, the Race for Water Foundation studied pyrolysis. This promising technology breaks down plastic molecules, without burning them, to transform them into a synthesis gas or into oil, useful to produce fuel, or electricity, or even to form polymers again.
These technologies are only at the pilot project stage and still need to be made more reliable and optimized to ensure minimum impact on the environment. However, their capacity to be integrated into small and medium-sized decentralized units could provide local solutions for plastic waste management, eliminating the transport of millions of tons of waste on land and at sea. This process could integrate new models of plastic waste management aimed at encouraging collection, responding to the many impossibilities of recycling, and avoiding unacceptable solutions such as landfills, incineration, or direct discharge into waterways. The revenue generated could pay collectors or reduce municipal waste management costs, bringing economic, social, and environmental benefits to local communities.
During the second Race for Water Odyssey, several proof-of-concept projects were initiated to mobilize local stakeholders and study the feasibility of a project to implement a pyrolysis system.
OUR PROOF-OF-CONCEPT PROJECTS
Read +A COASTAL, SEA, AND LAKE WASTE COLLECTION SOLUTION
Cleaning up the oceans is unrealistic, but it is still important and wise to put in place clean-up systems at ports, rivers, lakes, and shores. To this end, the foundation is proposing an efficient and environmentally friendly depollution vessel to collect plastic pollution, which will reduce the amount of plastics that leak into our oceans every day.
