Plastic Odyssey set sail from Marseille on October 1st, 2022 on a 3-year mission across 3 continents to discover, reference and share concrete solutions to help overcome the plastic waste crisis – both on land and in our seas.
Over the last 8 months, Plastic Odyssey has been making a significantly positive mark in North Africa where it has stopped in locations including Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, Senegal, Guinea and the Cape Verde Islands.
The Plastic Odyssey team has visited different communities in those destinations, not only raising awareness about the problems associated with sea borne plastics and plastic waste but undertaking a number of key recycling development milestones including:
- Supporting the opening of the first containerized recycling plant in Conakry, Republic of Guinea, which is capable of producing pavement from plastic waste
- Installing a plastic waste recycling micro-factory in Lome, Togo following several months of collaboration with Entrepreneurs du Monde and the Togolese association Miawodo
- In collaboration with local authorities and the International Organization for Migration (IOM), establishing a plastic waste-recycling unit in Djibouti to contribute to the cleaning of the city of Obock. The aim of this unit is to transform the plastic generated by the city into construction materials (pavers and concrete blocks) beneficial for the urban development of the city and the country.
- Held a series of educational events and video workshops to highlight the importance of plastic recycling
While sailing towards Brazil to start the South American leg of its journey, the team on board Plastic Odyssey has also undertaken a series of maintenance and optimizations on the recycling machines on-board, including replacing the blades of the shredder, testing the extruder, and calibrating the agglomerator, in addition to a complete revision of the onboard workshop.
Plastic Odyssey is currently in French Guiana in South America and over the coming months will be visiting destinations including St Lucia, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Costa Rica, Panama, Peru and Chile before heading West towards Indonesia.
Lubmarine is playing a crucial role in Plastic Odyssey’s global journey combining not only our high-performance lubricants but also the very latest ground-breaking global digital monitoring services in the shape of LubInsight neo, to help ensure efficient engine and equipment operation aboard.
The ground-breaking system was fitted on-board Plastic Odyssey following discussions with the Captain and Chief Engineer, providing both the crew and global support teams ashore with a fully digitalized lubricant sampling, testing and monitoring system.
LubInsight neo is helping the crew on the Plastic Odyssey protect and optimize their equipment by offering a fully interconnected and digitalized user experience without the need for specialist crew training.
According to Olivier Suming, Lubmarine Services Manager, the feedback from the crew has been extremely positive.
“It has been amazing to watch Plastic Odyssey’s journey unfold across North Africa and now with its arrival in South America. Some of its achievements in just a few months in helping establish plastic recycling centres in different locations in Africa as well as run multiple educational and training sessions are a tribute to the team and their vision to make a difference.
“And of course the vessel itself is crucial to that which is why we have been delighted with the feedback from the crew and Captain so far who have found the combination of LubInsight neo sampling, testing and monitoring in conjunction with our lubricants to be really adding value to their journey,”said Olivier.