OceanWise

Title: OceanWise
Start Date: April 2017
End Date: 31^st of December of 2021
Funding Body: OceanWise is funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) INTERREG Atlantic Area, under Priority Axis 4: Enhancing biodiversity and the natural and cultural assets
Project Partners: OceanWise is a European project with thirteen partners from five countries: Portugal, Spain, France, Ireland, and the United Kingdom

Introduction

OceanWise aims to jointly develop and implement a set of long-term measures to reduce the impact of expanded polystyrene (EPS) products as marine litter in the Atlantic Area (AA). Based on resource-efficiency, participatory methods, and Circular Economy (CE) principles, it will generate new and best practice within sectors using, manufacturing, or recycling EPS.

To achieve this, it is intended to explore new ways to:

• Identify EPS products and their source that are more likely to reach the marine environment and impact on its ecosystems;

• Propose and test plausible options (reduce, reuse, recycle, recover) to achieve better environmental outcomes within different sectors;

• Engage producer and designer communities on the sustainability of specific applications and to explore more circular models;

• Develop CE-oriented methodologies to assess new opportunities, barriers, and policy options. This proposal is driven by the EU-Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) and the OSPAR Convention’s Regional Action Plan on Marine Litter (RAPML).