Keep Sea Blue uses Oracle Blockchain technology to combat plastic waste pollution

Zurich – Keep Sea Blue, an independent international organization headquartered in Athens, has chosen Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and Oracle Blockchain to advance its mission in the plastic-free Mediterranean. Keep Sea Blue advances the circular economy of coastal plastics and can provide complete visibility and traceability across the entire plastic value chain with Oracle Cloud.

Eight million tons of plastic waste enters the world’s oceans every year. The Mediterranean, one of the world’s most vulnerable regions, has not escaped the plastic crisis. An estimated 229,000 tons of plastic waste enter the Mediterranean every year, damaging terrestrial and marine ecosystems and biodiversity.

Keep Sea Blue collects about 150 tons of plastic waste per month, which is the equivalent of about 5 million plastic bottles. With restrictions lifted and tourism expected to increase significantly this year, Keep Sea Blue expects a 50 percent increase in plastic waste along the coasts of the Mediterranean by 2022.

• Keep Sea Blue in partnership with volunteers, other non-profit organizations, the private sector and local authorities to rid beaches of plastic waste such as B-bottles, nylon and fishing nets.
• The collected waste is carefully sorted and processed into Recovered Seaside Plastic, a certified recycled raw material that manufacturers and brands can use to create new products or packaging.
• Through the blockchain-powered platform, authorized partners can log information and trace plastic back to its point of origin – all the way to the specific coastal area where it was collected.
• Companies that use packaging made from recycled materials are eligible to put the Seaside Reclaimed Plastic badge on their product or packaging. In this way, they can provide their customers with proof of the product cycle and provide them with product sustainability data.

Trace the collected plastics

Keep Sea Blue’s partners include Klöckner Pentaplast, a global manufacturer of sustainable packaging products that will use recycled material from coastal plastic collected by Keep Sea Blue to produce fresh food packaging in the UK, Italy, Portugal, Germany and Turkey.

“The good thing about what we created is that you can now track and see what happens to the waste you collect. When a team of volunteers or a local community collects 200 kilograms of plastic waste, they can research where that plastic is and how it was used to create a new product. And that is very motivating” . Founder Lefteris Bastakis.

“Advanced technologies are powerful tools to combat climate change. Oracle solves sustainability challenges with solutions that can be easily integrated into the core activities of any organization. The blockchain-based Keep Sea Blue platform is a very innovative way to use technology and we are very proud to be a part of its success. We hope it inspires a model The circular economy uses many organizations to harness the power of technology to achieve business success in a sustainable way.” – said Stefanos Dionisopoulos, Country Director, Oracle Greece. (oracle/mc/hfu)