One Earth One Ocean
Maritime Waste Collection
One Earth – One Ocean e. V. is an environmental organisation founded in 2011 whose goal is clearing waters worldwide of plastic waste. Since its foundation, the association has been working on the development of concepts for the purification of bodies of water. Initially, it focused solely on the removal of plastic waste, but now it has widened its net to cover the removal of oil and other pollutants, too. The association is working on the development of various different ship types to pick up plastic waste from bodies of water.
Take SeeHamsters for instance, they have been operating in inland waters and the Baltic Sea since 2012. These are small catamarans with a length of about four metres and a width of two meters. They feature a fold-down safety net or harness used to collect the plastic waste from inland waters. Then 2016 saw the launch of the SeeKuh, a ship measuring 12 × 10 metres. It is used in coastal regions and estuaries, such as Hong Kong. In 2018, One Earth – One Ocean developed the SeeElefant, a container ship that collects, sorts and processes the refuse collected by the SeeKuh ships, and reprocesses this back into oil. In 2019, the association received the German federal Ecodesign award in the ‘Concept’ category. https://oneearth-oneocean.com/
Rounding Up - All Together For A Better Future
As Germany's largest online shop for plant-based foods, we want to use our platform to make the world a little bit better. Sustainability, environmental protection and animal welfare are values that we attach great importance to. Likewise, many of our customers are people who want to do their bit for the planet, and the people and animals who live on it. That’s why we have developed a concept that allows everyone to get involved with small donations: rounding up. With every purchase in our online shop, customers can round up their purchase amount to the nearest euro when paying. The amounts, ranging from 1 to 99 cents, are collected by us and donated monthly on behalf of our customers. And because we too want to do our part, we round up the sum total from our own pocket at the end of the year as well.
The Project: Cleaning Up The Nile In Egypt
With around 20 million inhabitants, Cairo is the largest metropolis in Africa. Measuring 6,671 km long, not only is the Nile the longest river on the continent and the most important source of drinking water in the desert state, but it is also one of the ten most plastic-polluted rivers in the world. Where these two superlatives meet, in 2021, oeoo got together with local initiative VeryNile and numerous volunteers and launched a new long-term project to clean up the Nile and its connecting waters in Cairo and Luxor. In the spring of 2021, oeoo funded the construction of a new SeeHamster, which was built in Cairo according to oeoo specification. Staffed by three to five local staff, it cleans the banks of the Nile five days a week. The waste that is collected is processed by the “Zabaleen”, an ethnic group specialising in manual waste disposal, separation and recycling, something that is improving the income of this very poor immigrant ethnic group.
In addition, VeryNile has been on location since 2018 doing work to raise awareness among the largely uninformed population about the consequences of marine littering. Thanks to their extensive contacts with the Egyptian Ministry of Environment and Education, in VeryNile we have a competent partner on hand to set up a successful cleaning project on the ground there in the coming years.
