- Ongoing assist from Kia has enabled the elimination of over a million kilos of plastic from the Nice Pacific Rubbish Patch (GPGP)
- Partnership with The Ocean Cleanup aligns with Kia’s strategic transformation right into a sustainable mobility options supplier
Kia Company and world accomplice The Ocean Cleanup are as we speak celebrating a major milestone of their joint technique to deal with plastic air pollution on the earth’s oceans. Symbolically returning to the port of San Francisco from which the first-generation System 001 vessel launched into its maiden voyage six years in the past, The Ocean Cleanup’s present System 03 has accomplished a major haul.
Because the institution of the partnership in 2022, Kia’s assist has helped The Ocean Cleanup take away over a million kilos of plastic from the world’s largest accumulation of floating waste – the Nice Pacific Rubbish Patch (GPGP) – which has an estimated floor space of 1.6 million sq. kilometers.
In a major step in the direction of reaching its mission of ridding the world’s oceans of plastic, The Ocean Cleanup has introduced a transparent timeline to wash up the GPGP. Whereas information gathered throughout this season’s operations means that the GPGP might doubtlessly be cleaned inside 10 years because of recognized technological enhancements, the worldwide NGO is pushing boundaries and goals to halve the time wanted to wash the GPGP to 5 years.
Charles Ryu, Senior Vice President and Head of the International Model & CX Division at Kia Company, mentioned: “All of us at Kia prolong our warmest congratulations to The Ocean Cleanup group for its continued dedication and arduous work as the one group actively tackling plastic air pollution within the GPGP. We’re honored to be a key supporter of its ocean cleanup actions and look ahead to an much more bold chapter of our partnership as System 03 and operations are improved to shorten the timeline for cleanup.”
In 2025, The Ocean Cleanup will give attention to deploying a brand new hotspot searching initiative designed to map the “hotspots”, or areas of intense plastic accumulation within the GPGP, to extend the affect of future extractions.
“The Ocean Cleanup is a global non-profit and our operations are reliant on our unbelievable partnerships”, mentioned Boyan Slat, Founder and CEO of The Ocean Cleanup. “Our partnership with Kia is setting a brand new customary for a way organizations can drive actual change. Collectively, we’re proving that innovation and dedication can rid the oceans of plastic and encourage others to observe. The merchandise born from this collaboration will symbolize our shared progress and the tangible affect of sustainable options.”
Over the previous two and a half years, Kia and The Ocean Cleanup have labored collectively to cut back plastic air pollution. In its first six years of operation, The Ocean Cleanup executed 23 operational journeys and accomplished greater than 100 plastic extraction missions. These efforts have eliminated greater than 1,000,000 kilos of trash, addressing roughly 0.5 p.c of the floating plastic air pollution within the GPGP.
As a part of the collaborative imaginative and prescient to create a round useful resource system for ocean plastic, Kia and The Ocean Cleanup have been working collectively to seek out new methods of turning plastic waste extracted from the GPGP into sturdy, helpful merchandise. The primary merchandise from this initiative, a automobile accent for the Kia EV3, will launch in This fall of this 12 months.
Kia has additionally been integrating different recycled plastics and eco-friendly supplies into its newest fashions. This consists of Kia’s flagship all-electric SUV, the EV9, which makes use of recycled fishing nets in its inside carpet and recycled plastic bottles in its seat material. The EV6 additionally options fabric and matting constituted of recycled plastics.
To assist its broader imaginative and prescient of turning into a pioneer in sustainable mobility, Kia is concentrating on 20 p.c use of recycled plastics in its automobiles by 2030.
