Cleanup4Guimarães

The escalation of litter accumulation in aquatic environments is now widely acknowledged as an emerging global concern. Among various types of litter, macroplastics and their smaller size debris are considered

as the primary contributors to environmental contamination when compared to materials such as glass and metals. Industrial, agricultural and domestic effluents, runoffs and floods are identified as significant drivers of macroplastic, microplastic and textile litter mobilization in freshwater ecosystems. It is estimated that 19 to 23 million tonnes of plastic will end up in lakes, rivers, and seas annually. Despite rivers serving as major conduits for land-based waste to reach oceans, recent research suggests that most of the plastics produced and mismanaged in the environment may be retained in and around rivers, without ever reaching the open sea. However, the accumulation pathways of plastic and microplastic litter in river networks still remain poorly investigated. Recent studies in Guimarães municipality, have revealed that plastic and textile waste jointly represent 97% of the materials collected from riverbanks, posing a significant threat to aquatic ecosystems and escalating the risk of plastic accumulation in aquatic food webs. The CLEANUP4Guimarães project aims to create a multi-stakeholder ecosystem fostering inter- cooperation, innovation, and entrepreneurship in the cleanup of rivers within the Guimarães municipality, located northern Portugal, as well as in the suggesting valorization process of the collected plastic litter. To this end, the municipality will implement an integrative CLEANUP-RIVER system that fosters collaboration among the municipality, university, citizens, and private companies. This system aims to identify plastic litter hotspots in local freshwater ecosystems and employ eco-friendly techniques (sustainable eco-barriers) for efficient litter collection. Besides, a championship model, known as CLEANUP campaigns, will be instrumental in encouraging active engagement from local entities, citizens, and waste management bodies. This engagement will cover the construction of eco-barriers, the identification, collection, cleaning/selection, recycling-processing, and promotion of new value chains for plastic litter. The collected macro- and microplastics will undergo segregation, characterization, and categorization, with the objective of proposing processes for valorization through recycling and reuse.

This comprehensive strategy not only tackles the pressing environmental issue of litter accumulation in freshwater and marine ecosystems but also strives to transform this challenge into an opportunity, by fostering the promotion of a Circular Economy in the region.