Cleaning Litter by developing & Applying Innovative Methods

The Horizon 2020 Innovation Action “Cleaning Litter by developing and Applying Innovative Methods in European seas” (CLAIM) was a 4.5 years project that brought together 21 partners from 13 European Union countries, Tunisia and Lebanon and received funding from the EU under Grant Agreement No 774586. It focused on the development of five innovative cleaning technologies, modelling tools and approaches fostering ecosystem services, targeting the prevention and in situ management of marine plastic litter at their point of introduction to the marine environment (river estuaries and wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs)), towards the mitigation and efficient ecosystem management of marine litter pollution in the Mediterranean and Baltic Seas.
The ambition of the project was to:
1. develop advanced modeling tools to obtain a better knowledge of marine plastic debris in terms of sources, accumulation areas and transport processes;
2. develop cost-efficient methods for monitoring plastic particles that will provide valuable datasets for model validation;
3. develop and evaluate cost-efficient methods for removing macro and particularly microplastics, for which robust cleaning methods are still missing.

The primary objective of CLAIM was to provide practical tools for a step change towards the mitigation and efficient ecosystem management of marine litter pollution in the Mediterranean and Baltic Seas. CLAIM did so by developing and demonstrating cost-efficient cleaning methods for visible and invisible plastics, as near as possible to the major sources of marine litter (i.e. coasts and coastal activities) and to limit the amount of litter entering the sea. Furthermore CLAIM developed and demonstrated fit for purpose modelling tools able to identify the regions and services (e.g. fish stocks, aquaculture, sensitive habitats and biodiversity) under increased threat from the introduction of plastics.
Hence, CLAIMs overarching objectives were to:
• advance our knowledge on the current status of marine plastic pollution,
• provide innovative technologies able to reduce the amount and impact of plastic pollution on the ecosystem based services of the Mediterranean and Baltic Seas,
• set the basis for operational forecasting of the impacts of marine plastic litter pollution on ecosystem services,
• provide advice for management decision making, including fostering social acceptance and assessment of economic impacts.
The CLAIM tools are generic and thus, although only two key areas are included (Mediterranean and Baltic), the proposed methodology can be easily expanded to all EU seas. Moreover the two systems represent two extremes cases, the Baltic Sea, which is a brackish system heavily influenced by freshwater runoff and the saline and oligotrophic Mediterranean Sea.
CLAIM focused on the development of five innovative cleaning technologies (CLEAN TRASH system, small-scale thermal treatment devices, W&W EcoPlex Microplastic Remover®, Photocatalytic Reactor, CLAIM FB system), modelling tools and approaches fostering ecosystem services, targeting the prevention and in situ management of marine plastic litter at their point of introduction to the marine environment (river estuaries and WWTPs), towards the mitigation and efficient ecosystem management of marine litter pollution in the Mediterranean and Baltic Seas. CLAIM also provided policy briefs to establish recommendations for the EU on the most promising policies.