Following the installation of a plastic collector in the water at the Port of Brussels, the Audi Brussels Environmental Foundation and Recycled Island Foundation are looking to raise awareness of the issue of plastic waste. "Since the installation six months ago we collected ten cubic meters of waste in the litter trap," said Altons Moes of the Port of Brussels. It is expected to collect one cubic metre of plastic waste in the water per month.
To raise public awareness of the extent of the problem, they made sofas from the plastic collected during the test phase. One of them is on display at the entrance to the Forest plant to raise employee awareness.
The capital is the third place where such a device of the "recycled Island" project is installed, after Rotterdam and the Indonesian island of Ambon.
The plastic collector works by collecting the waste circulating in the canal in a mesh construction, preventing it from ending up in the open sea. Most of the plastic waste floating in the oceans ends up there via rivers.
The Recycled Island Foundation focuses specifically on plastic waste in the first metre below the water's surface, which is the case for more than 98% of it.
Jules Johnston
The Brussels Times
