Scalable Full-cycle Marine Litter Remediation in the Mediterranean: Robotic and Participatory Solutions

SeaClear2.0 will develop a holistic approach to address the full cycle of marine litter, towards the Mission to restore, protect and preserve the health of our oceans, seas and waters by 2030.

To this end, we aim to prevent and reduce marine litter pollution, particularly plastics and microplastics, in the Mediterranean via (i) Community activation, citizen empowerment, and participatory practices for identifying site-specific measures for marine litter prevention and reduction, supporting the implementation of the WFD and MSFD; (ii) Scaling up and demonstrating the SeaClear2.0 system, an innovative solution with teams of autonomous, intelligent robots for effective monitoring and collection of marine seafloor and surface litter; (iii) Providing solutions for valorization of the collected litter via better sorting and recycling; (iv) Adding novel dimensions in policy making by providing evidence for new legislation and the implementation of existing rules to achieve Good Environmental Status and (v) Accelerating the uptake of our solution by demonstrating its scalability and replicability to the Mediterranean basin and beyond in three full-scale demonstrations, three pilot tests, and at least five associated-region projects.SeaClear2.0 impact ranges from the reduction of upstream and beach litter via public awareness and citizen activation; through effective litter monitoring using both robotic mapping and public reporting in a gamified app; to direct collection of at least 57% of existing litter in the areas covered by the robot teams, with options for valorization.

The singular selling point of SeaClear2.0 is our unique blend of technological innovation (ii, iii), community-activation (i), and policy-making (iv).We achieve all this by exploiting consortium expertise in public engagement, policy-making, robotic perception and control, artificial intelligence, marine technology and operations, and litter sorting and recycling.