The Blue Circle initiative won the award in the Entrepreneurial Vision category for its contributions to monitoring the entire lifecycle of plastic pollution in the oceans comprehensively, encompassing collection, regeneration, re-manufacturing, and re-sale.

Over 6,000 individuals and 200 enterprises from East China’s Zhejiang Province are involved in the project. To date, it has successfully gathered about 10,700 tons of marine debris.

According to Xinhua, these data make Blue Circle China’s great marine plastic waste collection program.

A study by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation in the United Kingdom estimated that oceans could carry more plastic than fish by 2050, leading to more pollution.

The organization, founded in 2010 to accelerate the transition to a circular economy, pointed out that such materials take about 1,000 years to degrade, which has very negative impacts on the oceans and the environment.

mh/iff/mgt/idm