On the vast sea, if plastic bottles are discarded at will into the sea and remain in the sea water, they will be decomposed into micro-plastics, which will cause continuous and adverse effects on the sea, sea organisms and even humans. How do you recycle them and turn them into useful resources?

A new "blue cycle" Marine plastic waste management model from Zhejiang, China, provides the answer - through blockchain and Internet of Things technology, tracking and monitoring the entire life cycle of plastic pollution, including collection, recycling, remanufacturing, and re-sale. Recently, the project was selected from 2,500 nominations around the world to receive the United Nations Environment Programme's 2023 Champions of the Earth Award.

How can Marine plastic waste be regenerated through the "Blue Cycle"? The reporter visited this.

Collection and storage:

Increase motivation in many ways

In the evening, on the beach of Huangcay Island, Luqiao District, Taizhou City, Zhejiang province, the fishing boat returned from the sea. On this trip, the boat boss Lao Chen caught a good catch. Busy unloading, he asked the crew to take the used discarded fishing nets, foam, plastic bottles, plastic bags, and Marine debris that was caught with the fish off the ship and hand it over to a nearby place called "Little Blue House."

Lao Chen said he usually declared waste such as plastic bottles, fishing nets and waste oil that needed to be recycled through the "Zhejiang Office" App. If there is too much waste on board when going to sea, declare the location and item information in this App, and there will be a "sea drop" fishing boat to recover.

At the beach, nearby fishermen and volunteers dressed in blue vests picked up plastic bottles washed ashore by the sea with clamps and put them into plastic bags, with cameras on their chests recording the process and location of their pickup. It should be noted that in order to ensure that the bottles really come from within 3 km of the coastline, the electronic fence program will alert them if they cross the line.

These plastic bottles will also be sent to the "Little Blue House". There, the recycling price of each plastic bottle is 2-3 cents, while in the general recycling station, the price of a bottle is 3 cents.

The "Little Blue House" is a collection and storage site for Marine debris, where it is sorted and compressed. Take plastic bottles as an example, they will be compressed into bottle bricks, sent to the granulation factory, made into plastic particles, to produce more in line with the international ecological concept of high-value plastic products. In order to improve the enthusiasm of front-end collection, the income after the sale of the product will be "fed" to the people involved in Marine plastic recycling. This is why discarded plastic bottles from the ocean are nearly 10 times more expensive to recycle than ordinary plastic bottles.

In the port of Jiaojiang District of Taizhou City, there is a warehouse shaped like a box, its name is "ocean cloud warehouse", which is an intelligent treatment system, can intelligent classification, temporary storage, deep purification, pretreatment and reduction of waste such as ship pollutants, waste plastic bottles, fishing nets and fishing gear. After crushing treatment, the volume reduction of Marine debris can reach 90%, greatly reducing subsequent transportation costs.

Surprisingly, there are not many staff in the "ocean Cloud warehouse", but relying on a variety of iot sensing technology, high automation control technology, digital supervision technology and other high-tech, to achieve remote unmanned control. In Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, more than 200 kilometers away from the "ocean cloud warehouse", the staff of Zhejiang Blue View Technology Co., Ltd. as the operator can remotely control the various systems of the "Ocean cloud warehouse" through AR glasses, and overhaul the equipment.

Regeneration:

Unmanned workshop plays the leading role

The collected Marine debris will be transferred to Veolia Huafei Polymer Technology (Zhejiang) Co., Ltd. located in Anji County, Huzhou City, Zhejiang Province. The company is a member of the public welfare organization "Blue Alliance" and has a Marine plastic recycling certification certificate issued by an international certification body.

The reporter saw at the scene, many white bags outside the plant neatly placed, which contained plastic bottles to be treated; There was a loud roar of machinery in the factory. In the workshop, several workers observed the operation of the machine. Veolia Huafie's operations director, Fu Xianwei, said the company has basically realized the unmanned production process to ensure the standardization and high quality of products. Plastic bottles, for example, will be sorted, deeply cleaned, melted and granulated here to become finished plastic particles and gain new life.

In the cold washing line of the cleaning workshop, the plastic bottle will be unpacked and cleaned to remove impurities such as oil, sludge and dust that may be stained. After cleaning, the plastic bottle needs to go through an automatic optical separator to remove impurities of different colors and materials, and further remove impurities with manual sorting. After sorting, bottles with the same material, color and quality are broken to obtain bottle slices. After cold washing and sorting, the plastic bottle sheet looks clean, but there will still be some impurities and anomalies that have not been completely removed, and more fine high temperature cleaning and sorting are needed.

"Marine plastics are soaked in seawater for a long time, and the color value after recycling is yellow, the sea salt content is higher, and the physical properties are lower, which puts higher requirements on cleaning technology." Fu Xianwei told reporters that the company has specially improved the pharmaceutical process, the high temperature stirring cooking process of about 95 degrees Celsius, and the sea salt, fructose, sediment, glue and ink contained on the surface of the bottle sheet are fully hot washed. After the attachment on the surface of the bottle is removed by high-speed friction, the optical sorting machine carries out fine sorting again. Whether the quality of the bottle is acceptable, it also needs to be strictly inspected, and only the bottle with a content of impurities less than the control value can be screened.

On a huge conveyor belt, the bottles are fed flat into an extruder to melt, and the melt passes through a filter to remove impurities, and finally cut into uniform sized recycled plastic particles. Before leaving the factory, the plastic particles are tested and inspected by the laboratory. "Through these processes, the quality of Marine plastic is comparable to that of plastic in normal channels." Fu Xianwei said.

At present, Veolia Huafei has processed tens of millions of plastic bottles recovered from the ocean. By adjusting the granulation process, the plant can produce various levels of recycled plastic particles such as food contact.

Products:

The machine "skillfully" weaves high-quality fabrics

Internationally certified Marine plastic particles can appreciate more than twice as much as traditional recycled plastics, and products produced with Marine plastic waste as raw materials have higher added value. At Hangzhou Xinsheng Printing and Dyeing Co., a member of the Blue Alliance, Marine plastic particles will be made into a variety of fabrics, which are mainly exported to international clothing brands.

How do ocean plastic particles become fabric? According to Fu Xiaoling, marketing director of Hangzhou Xinsheng Printing and dyeing, the particles can be fused with cotton, linen, wool and other fibers to become staple fibers, or the particles can be directly drawn into filament by a machine; The fibers are then spun into loops of yarn.

In the pilot workshop, the reporter saw rows of yarn in the knitting circle machine "skillful" weaving, into a roll of grey cloth. Then, the grey cloth is sent to the dyeing and finishing line. In several rumbling cylinders, they will be stained with various colors. After processing, the fabric is placed in a constant temperature and humidity testing room to complete a series of tests to ensure that the quality meets international standards.

Because the source of Marine plastics is not standardized, many technical difficulties need to be solved in the dyeing and finishing process. Fu Xiaoling said that yarn made of Marine plastic has high oil content and impurity content, which is easy to cause uneven color flowers, poor color fastness, and other problems in dyeing.

To this end, Xinsheng printing and dyeing company technicians have carried out research. For example, in the dyeing process of screening degreasing agents, increase the pre-treatment temperature, by reducing the heating rate of the dye tank, extend the dyeing holding time to ensure the uniformity of grey cloth dyeing.

"We are proud to say that the quality and performance of these fabrics and garments made from Marine plastics are no worse than other recycled clothes, and they are also highly sought after in the international market." Fu Xiaoling said.

Shipped:

Print a visual traceability "ID card"

Before the products made of Marine plastic leave the factory, there is a final step - printing a two-dimensional code with the words "Blue Alliance", which is the exclusive "identity card" of each product.

The special feature of this "ID card" is that it records the entire process of Marine plastic collection, storage, transportation, regeneration, manufacturing, etc., through Internet of Things devices, and uses the two-dimensional code generated by blockchain technology to ensure that the product is truly derived from Marine plastic.

On a bag made of Marine debris, the reporter scanned the QR code on the top, showing a picture that said: the bag contains 6.5 grams of Marine plastic, and the purchase of consumers can reduce the production of 0.32 plastic bottles and reduce 8.45 grams of carbon emissions. The picture is accompanied by a profile photo of the collector. Click the Visual trace button to see the entire process of the product "from ocean to shelf" on the map.

With this "ID card", the effect is immediate. Chen Guanghui, co-founder of Zhejiang Blue View Technology Co., LTD., one of the initiators of the "Blue Cycle" project, said that many enterprises at home and abroad are willing to purchase more expensive Marine plastic recycled particles and products to fulfill their social responsibilities. But by traditional means, it is difficult to tell whether these plastic particles actually come from Marine plastic waste. The company has developed a visual traceability system based on blockchain technology to solve this problem.

Up to now, Zhejiang has 237 industrial enterprises, 10,200 ships to join the "blue cycle", coastal elderly, fishermen, volunteers actively participate, the number of participants reached 61,800 people. The project collected and treated 10,900 tons of Marine debris, including 2,254 tons of plastic waste, reducing carbon emissions by about 2,930 tons, increasing the annual income of front-line collectors by about 13,000 yuan, and fishermen received over 100 million yuan of green low-interest financial loans.

Globally, the amount of Marine plastic pollution is still huge. Happily, off China's coast, change is taking place. As one of the participants of the "Blue cycle", Guo Wenbiao, a fisherman in Zhejiang province, used to see fewer and fewer fish in the sea, sometimes a net filled with a lot of waste. "We depend on the sea to eat the sea, but we must love the sea and protect the sea." Now people are becoming more aware of this, and every time they go to sea and return to port, they voluntarily bring back waste, so as not to burden the ocean." Guo Wenbiao said.

【 Reporter's notes 】

To solve the problem of "no one" with "high yield", to solve the problem of "low value" with "high credit", to solve the problem of "sustainable" with "high feedback"... The "Blue cycle" project in Zhejiang has changed the previous governance model in which the government provided funds for the governing body and the finance. It relies on the "Internet of things + blockchain" technology as the core of the digital platform, integration of management departments, the masses, enterprises and other forces.

An important part of the Blue Cycle project is to set an inspiring example for governments, businesses and communities around the world who want to take action to reduce plastic pollution. At present, many places in China are further promoting the "blue cycle" model. It is believed that with the participation of more people, environmental protection and Marine protection will become the consensus and practical actions of more people.