PPP : Preventing Plastic Pollution

A European project to tackle plastic pollution

Coordination

Ika Paul-Pont et Arnaud Huvet pour le Lemar

Project type

European

Funding

Le projet, d’un montant de 14M€, a été approuvé par le Programme France (Manche) Angleterre, qui a engagé 9,9M€ de financement via le Fonds Européen de Développement Régional.

Project duration

Start Date

24/04/2024

End Date

24/04/2024

Working in partnership with 18 organisations from across France and England, Preventing Plastic Pollution seeks to understand and reduce the impacts of plastic pollution in the marine environment. By looking at the catchment from source to sea, the project will identify and target hotspots for plastic, embed behaviour change in local communities and businesses, and implement effective solutions and alternatives.  

 

Preventing Plastic Pollution (PPP) is a €14million funded EU INTERREG VA France (Channel) England Programme project co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund which will work across seven pilot sites: Brest Harbour, Bay of Douarnenez, Bay of Veys, Poole Harbour, and the Medway, Tamar, and Great Ouse estuaries.

The information gathered from research in these areas will allow the cross-Channel partnerships to tackle some of the four million tonnes of plastic waste that enter the sea via rivers every year.

Project objectives:

PPP will improve the quality of Transitional Waters across the France (Channel) England area (SO 3.2) by;

– Developing a scalable and transferable mapping tool to provide quantifiable evidence of sources and quantities of plastic pollution in catchments.

– Developing an effective portfolio of innovative interventions to reduce plastic waste in or entering catchments.

– Transforming the behaviour of target groups and demonstrating best practice.

Expected project results:

PPP will improve water quality with

  1.  A 10 % improvement in good ecological status (WFD Descriptor 10) in transitional waters.
  2. A reduction in the harm caused by plastic pollution in rivers and the sea equivalent to €38.8M-€126M (150 km river/coast cleared, 200 t plastic removed).
  3. A plastic-free charter implemented by 650 businesses & 50 supply chains modified.
  4. Projected uptake to include+10 more catchments 2 yrs post project, and 100 catchments after 5 years.

The LEMAR partner, via CNRS and Ifremer staff, is in charge of monitoring plastic pollution and their sources in the bay of Brest and the bay of Douarnenez over the 3 years of the project (2020-2023), in addition to the monitoring in the Baie des Veys for which the LERN Ifremer laboratory is responsible. This makes it possible to test the monitoring of plastic pollution as an indicator of the effectiveness of the local actions taken during the PPP project. In addition, LEMAR is responsible for characterizing the toxicity of microplastics linked to the sources identified on our coasts and tested experimentally on marine organisms. And since we must be active in limiting plastic waste at sea, PPP will participate within our two institutes, IUEM Ifremer through the participation of the RSE group, in daily reduction actions of the use of plastics, and the collection and sorting of plastic waste in order to improve its end-of-life and allow recovery, essentially by recycling by with local partners.

Download the PPP’s poster    

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Project updates

PPP, February 2022 update

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1/ Monitoring contamination in coastal areas Every 6 months, we carry out a sampling campaign of floating debris in the bay of Douarnenez and the roadstead of Brest, 2 of the 7 pilot areas of the PPP project. Four campaigns have already been…
04/04/2022

Plastic pollution awareness on Ouessant island

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As part of the Preventing Plastic Pollution project, the partners CNRS, Océanopolis and the Parc Naturel Marin d'Iroise went to the island of Ouessant for two days to raise awareness of plastic pollution among schoolchildren and the island's…
20/06/2021

Plastik Panic in the ocean: the exhibition facing the harbor

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Thursday 29 April 2021 was inaugurated the exhibition "Plastik Panic in the Ocean", in the presence of three vice-presidents of Brest Métropole, members of LEMAR and the scientific mediation team of Océanopolis. This exhibition of 16 large-format…
30/04/2021

 

The team

Contributors

  • Queen Mary University of London
  • LABOCEA Conseil, Expertise et Analyses
  • Syndicat mixte établissement public de gestion et d’aménagement de la baie de Douarnenez
  • Office Français De La Biodiversité, Parc naturel marin d’Iroise
  • Brest Métropole
  • Centre national de la recherche scientifique CNRS
  • Conseil départemental de la Manche
  • Institut français de recherche pour l’exploitation de la mer Ifremer
  • Environment Agency
  • The Rivers Trust
  • Syndicat de bassin de l’Elorn
  • ACTIMAR
  • Brest’aim
  • Westcountry Rivers Trust
  • South East Rivers Trust
  • Plymouth City Council
  • Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
  • University of Plymouth