Tackling Ocean Plastic with Technology
Kia partners with The Ocean Cleanup to utilize marine plastics
Over 5 trillion tons of plastic have already made its way into our oceans, leaving an impact on ecosystems, economies, and humanity as a whole. The Ocean Cleanup chose to tackle this challenge through inspiration and innovation. Kia is joining forces with them in an effort to create a better tomorrow. The Ocean Cleanup is a nonprofit organization based in the Netherlands, developing and scaling technologies to rid the world’s oceans of plastic by stemming the inflow via rivers and cleaning up what has already accumulated in the ocean.
They are currently targeting the Great Pacific Garbage Patch for cleanup using high-tech systems called Interceptors. These systems deploy to garbage patches in the middle of the ocean to suck trash out of the water, which is then sorted and recycled accordingly. Through the use of active steering and computer modeling, they use data in order to identify plastic hot spots to maximize collection efforts. They’re also placing smaller Interceptors in the world’s most polluted rivers to prevent garbage from ever reaching the ocean. With this technology, they’ll continue to create an upgraded fleet of systems to deploy to other ocean garbage patches and rivers around the world.
This inventive spirit has inspired Kia to partner with The Ocean Cleanup to create a more sustainable future. Through this global partnership, Kia will integrate the collected, recycled ocean plastic into the design of future cars. The partnership also includes financial support, construction efforts, supply donations, and even a fleet of EV6s for their headquarters to use. The team at The Ocean Cleanup will also collect and share groundbreaking data with Kia on how to reduce the use of plastics when it comes to designing new cars. Together, through technology, innovation, and optimism, we can tackle the shared goal to eliminate 90% of floating plastic pollution from the world’s oceans by 2040. A better tomorrow starts with what we do today.
To learn more about our sustainability efforts, check out https://www.kia.com/us/en/sustainability
