ECO YACHT ‘OCEAN SAVIOUR’ SAILS FOR PLASTIC

Amsterdam, 9 October 2018 – The Ocean Cleanup may have competition. The Ocean Saviour, a new initiative to clean up the ocean, was recently launched in Southampton.

The Ocean Saviour is the very first yacht designed to convert plastic waste into fuel. The yacht thus supplies its own fuel. Using booms, it collects plastic from the sea. The plastic is channelled on board and is shredded. It is then converted into fuel using plasma gasification. This technique was developed by PyroGenesis and was used for the first time on the American navy vessel, the Gerald R. Ford, as a solution to convert the vessel’s own waste. About 5 tons of plastic can be removed from the water every day.

In the design, the vessel is 70 metres long and has three decks. The lowest deck is entirely dedicated to processing plastic. The ship is estimated to cost 40 million euros to build and it is not known at present whether there are investors.

The Ocean Saviour is designed by Richard Roberts and Simon White, founders of TheYachtMarket.com. Read more information here. This type of initiative has often proven unrealistic in the past for reasons such as technical feasibility and the lack of investors.

David Jones is closely involved in the project. He is a researcher at the University of Plymouth, is the founder of Justoneocean and the initiator of the Big Micro Plastic Survey of which the Plastic Soup Foundation is a partner. Jones is positive about the idea. “This project has enormous potential to help clean all the plastic waste in the ocean.”