Kicking off the first of the Blue Circular Economy webinar series three speakers answered and posed a number of key questions on marine waste the realities of recycling, reusing and building industries around used fishing nets.
The full video is available below but some areas of exploration included:
- When companies claim products are upcycled, what is the standard around this upcycling is it 1% or .001%?
- Could we substitute virgin plastics, with closed loop plastics
- Every year 8 million tonnes of plastic material goes into the ocean
- Can we consider a universal, systematic approach to look at the value of the FNRC materials and how we can progress these to new value chains, new products, new designs
- The legislative imperative is there with the EU single use plastics directive issued last week
- What infrastructure from our Ports, to our communities do we need in place, to effectively meet the collecting & repurposing of fishing nets, which can account for 37% of marine litter in Norway.
The running order of the video is below the video.
Introduction to Blue Circular Economy
Presenter: Arron Wilde Tippett is a Researcher at the Department for International Business and Marketing at NTNU Ålesund, with a background in Environmental Science and Ecosystem Services. Arron’s current research focus is on Life Cycle Assessment and Ecolabelling. Arron is also coordinating the Environmental Systems Analysis Forum (ESAF): a research group dedicated to building sustainability expertise across the NTNU Ålesund Campus.
Waste Fishing Nets, Ropes & Components in Ports: Professor Martin Charter will present the key results from research into waste FNRCs in ports in the NPA region; and then he will review existing types of products on the market derived from FNRCs. Finally present areas of potential engagement for SMEs.
Presenter: Professor Martin Charterco-founded The Centre for Sustainable Design ® at University for the Creative Arts) UCA in 1995 and has directed it since 1996. He is Professor of Innovation and Sustainability and the Chair of Environmental & Social Sustainability Working Group (ESSWG) at UCA, and Senior Associate at UCA’s Business School for the Creative Industries.
Supply Chain: Supply chain of fishing gear life cycle and the pressing challenges of managing waste related to fishing gears and ropes in Norway. Highlight the potential opportunities to extract value out of this waste by exploring the principles of circular economy.
Presenter: Paritosh Deshpande is a final year PhD Researcher at the Department of Industrial economics and Technology Management, NTNU, with a background of Environmental Engineering and Sustainability Science. Paritosh’s research focuses on sustainability & closing the loop of plastics from the commercial fishing sector of Norway. Paritosh has been working closely with the fishery related stakeholders’ within Nordic countries, also Circular Ocean(2015-2018) and now Blue Circular Economy(2018-2020).