There’s no doubt plastic is flowing through earth’s waterways and harming marine life, so Recycled Island Foundation (RIF) is working on ways to capture and repurpose it before it reaches the ocean. In fact, the plastic they recycle will even help sustain marine life. RIF’s new “Recycled Park” in Rotterdam, Netherlands creatively utilizes recycled plastic waste to build floating structures that will provide habitats to a variety of species as well as a pleasant public green space.
“The aim of this iconic Recycled Park is to illustrate that recycled plastic from the open waters is a valuable material and suitable for recycling. By re-using the retrieved plastics and by producing building blocks with them, the plastics receive new value,” Recycled Island Foundation (RIF) describes one of their major goals of the project.
Aside from preventing the plastic from going into the ocean and finding a new use for it, the project serves several other important purposes.
According to RIF “birds, fish and micro-organism find food, breeding ground and shelter in the floating park. Through the park runs a small canal about half a meter deep; small fish and birds find here shelter and the space to grow before entering the deeper waters.”
In the process, this will help the city of Rotterdam achieve another goal – the structures and the animals they attract will help “soften” the riverbanks hard shores to create slopes over time.
The project took several years of planning, securing funds and permission in Rotterdam, as well as collaboration with many stakeholders before it could even get underway. Of course, since the Recycled Park is made entirely of recycled plastic, RIF and its supporters had to collect all that plastic first.
The first step in creating the park was capturing the plastic that flowed through the New Meuse river, which empties into the North Sea. With the help of Hebo Maritiemservice and the Rotterdam municipality, RIF developed “passive litter traps.” The traps are floating structures with a deep bin-like area where plastic can collect and build up. Although water flows through the trap, plastic becomes trapped.
The best part is that these devices can be used in rivers throughout the world to stop plastic before it ever enters the ocean, and RIF has already helped place a litter trap in the bay of Ambon in Indonesia.
“The water is in many cities the lowest point, resulting in the unfortunate accumulation of litter in our rivers,” Architect and founder of RIF said. “When we retrieve the plastics directly in our cities and ports we actively prevent the further growth of the plastic soup in our seas and oceans. Rotterdam can set an example for port cities everywhere in the world. The realization of the building blocks in recycled plastics is an important step towards a litter free river.”
Once the trap is full, the plastic is sorted and processed. Different types of plastic can serve different purposes or uses in the structures.
“An important aspect is that we want to reuse all the plastics we find. It is crucial and we prefer not to have any remaining waste,” according to RIF. “With the development of the building blocks we do hope that one day the plastic pollution will become less.”
Once the plastic is sorted and a UV-blocker is added to prevent it from degrading, it’s molded into building blocks. With the help of Wageningen University, RIF settled on a hexagonal design, which means more pieces can easily be added on later to expand the floating park.
The pieces vary in height and are partially submerged. This allows for plants, including trees, to grow on the top of the blocks. Birds and other animals can build their nests there or rest on the structures. A testament to the success of the project, ducks were already making use of the structures even before the grand opening.
This revolutionary project sets an example for the world. If we continue on the track we’re on by 2050, there will be more plastic in the ocean than fish, and 99 percent of seabirds will have eaten plastic. If humans stop using single-use plastic items like plastic bags, cups, and straws, and can repurpose the plastic we do use, we may be able to save our oceans. The Recycled Park along with RIF helps present a partial but important solution to the 8 million tons of plastic that end up in the ocean every year.
This is truly genius and amazing! Kudos to the people of Rotterdam! You are heroes, in my book, and saviors of our beautiful planet!😃👍✨❤️
what a great idea. I wish the U S would utilize this idea, every little bit helps, and it would really help the environment tremendously.
Fantastic idea. Well done! I hope the UK government will take notice and employ this in our rivers here. If every country took up this idea and implemented it, the oceans and water ways would be cleaner in no time.
Lets all hope that other countries will be quick on the up take and follow in the Netherlands footsteps, sooner rather than later.
Marvellous idea. My only concern is that it seems a huge outlay financially for this one project, although one hopes it will continue to be used to create other floating parks.
yes, what a brilliant solution to utilize our plastic waste. Bravo Netherlands for your innovative use of plastic to create an environment wildlife. We need to follow their example here in America.
Thanks for trying to fix our arrogance, hopefully the rest of the world will follow. I recycle but don’t know what is done with our recycling. I have also read a company came up with a compound that dissolves plastic.
Lemonade out of lemons. Second best to not having plastic at all. Please don’t buy it (okay, you can’t avoid it when purchasing a car, but do your best, please). Consider how convenience is wrecking the environment. It doesn’t have to be this way. So much more plastic garbage will accumulate before more floating devices such as this exist.
It breaks my heart to see what mankind has done to the beautiful gift of nature that we were given must we destroy everything that is given to us??
This is brilliant! Whoever designed, created, and implemented this ingenious solution surely deserves a Nobel Prize.
Posted by ladyinthemountains under life, Uncategorized | Tags: book reviews, Communication, fitness, health, inspiration, life, me, planks, reading, relationships, weight lifting |
I am reading this book Never Let Go. It is a book on weight lifting and fitness. It was given to me by the ex-con before he moved to Phoenix. It is a good book that is helping me remember some of my old weightlifting knowledge and is teaching me more on it and diet. Things have changed a bit since I was a lifter in the 80s.
The chapter last night was talking about warm-ups and he ended up stating that the warm-up should actually be something important to your workout. For instance, if you are working hard on pull ups, to make that part of your warm up. He ended up stating this quote “If it is important, do it every day. If it’s not important, don’t do it at all.” WOW!!! Is that true in all aspects of life. He even went on to say that. He said to make sure to tell your loved ones that you love them every day and he gave other things in every day life that he thought it pertained to. I think this is going to be my motto in life for a while. Since the divorce it basically has been to have fun but lately I have been focusing so much on my fitness and myself in other ways.
So, what is important to me? Telling my friends and family that I love them. Working out- specifically my core. Eating well. Reading. Working my brain- puzzles, working on foreign language, etc. Of course, the things we all have to do, pay bills, work, chores but life shouldn’t be all about those things. Other things are important in our lives. I think the physical one that I am going to add is planks. I was doing them and push ups daily until I got my bowflex and now I have been doing lifting. The planks have been neglected and are such an important and good exercise for the core. I need to do those BEFORE I get on the bowflex every morning. The brain activities are to help prevent Alzheimers. It also helps that I do enjoy those things. I have been using an app to learn Spanish for a bit and do lots of puzzles and games that use your brain. I do not like the ones like Angry Birds, I prefer to THINK..
I would love to hear from my readers what they think is important. What are you going to do every day? I may add more to mine, in fact, I probably will.
Tags: book reviews, Communication, fitness, health, inspiration, life, me, planks, reading, relationships, weight lifting
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