A new collaboration agreement has been reached between OPF and acckon ApS in the project “Closed-loop recycling of mooring lines”.
It is estimated that globally 75,000 tons of hawsers are produced in virgin plastic, equivalent to 7% of all maritime plastic waste. Hawsers are a key component on ships, ensuring proper mooring to the dock. However, due to poor waste management and a high content of plastic, discarded hawsers pose a threat to the marine environment.
The startup company acckon ApS, founded by the two DTU students Anders Thrane Madsen and Clara Anna Olesen, is currently developing a technology to seperate the plastic types (PP and PET) in the discarded hawsers, and thereby creating a way for the materials to be recycled into new products. This is an essential part of the project, where the over-all goal is to establish a closed-loop solution where discarded hawsers are collected, processed, and eventually recycled into new hawsers and rope.
The agreement between OPF and acckon ApS is an important step forward in this exciting project – one that will help protect the marine environment from unnecessary plastic pollution and at the same time create a profitable business for the involved partners.
Read more about the project here.