Pathways to sustainable post-consumer plastics in aquaculture

POCOplast investigates new pathways to sustainable use of post-consumer-plastic (PCP) from aquaculture. The aquaculture industry is the largest producer of hard plastic waste in Norway and is expected to grow significantly in the coming decades, but only a fraction of PCP gets recycled into new products. This highlights the need to increase plastic recycling, while also reducing plastics use. Consequently, the main objective of the project is to provide new knowledge on how the concept of circular economy may be applied, to enable sustainable value chain development around PCP from the Norwegian aquaculture industry. To achieve impact, the project has established a 'Learning Alliance' where actors and researchers work together to identify sustainable pathways and facilitate change. The 'Learning Alliance' engages actors from all parts of the value chain, from generation of plastic waste to the production of new products from recycled plastics, as well as non-firm actors, in a common quest for new knowledge on mitigation of plastic waste from aquaculture. The 'Learning Alliance' focuses on how firms, authorities, and other stakeholders may work together to meet the sustainability challenges by developing a market for PCP from aquaculture for sustainable production in other sectors. With the aim to enhance collaboration between the project stakeholders, the Learning alliance will spend time on getting to know each other better. In collaboration with the project members, three initial mappings have been conducted: 1) mapping of existing barriers and driver related to the recycling of hard plastics, 2) mapping of partners? existing business models and their circularity, 3) mapping of amounts, qualities and recycling possibilities for plastics from aquaculture. Going forward, the project will further analyse the potential for a more sustainable use of hard plastics from aquaculture. This entails: 1) conducting a socio-technical analysis and 2) assessment of potential for developing circular business models based PCP from aquaculture.

POCOplast will investigate new pathways to sustainable use of post consumer-plastic (PCP) from aquaculture. The aquaculture industry is the largest producer of post-consumer hard PW in Norway, and the industry is expected to grow significantly in the coming decades. A major problem in the Nordic countries is that plastic imports are substantial whereas markets for recycled plastics are small. This calls for a need to create a sustainable balance between supply and demand. New knowledge about the opportunities and barriers to more sustainable use of PCP is one of the core issues addressed in POCOplast. Given the urgency of the PCP challenge, the project focuses on a 'recycling plastics' pathways, which implies a distinct circular economy (CE) focus. As a point of departure, the main objective of the project is to provide new knowledge on how the concept of CE may be applied, to enable sustainable circular value chain development around PCP from the Norwegian aquaculture industry. In so doing POCOplast takes a holistic approach, seeing that multiple elements including material technology, markets, user practices, infrastructures, institutions and business models, must be addressed in order to facilitate a transition towards increased circularity and more sustainable plastic resource use. To address this challenge, we take a sustainability transitions perspective to gain a better understanding of the entire socio-technical system around PCP. POCOplast combines insights on socio-technical systems (plastics in aquaculture, and PCP to 'recipient sectors'), circular business models, PCP value chains, institutional development and actor strategies. The project focuses on multi-actor processes and co-development in sustainability transitions. To reflect this, the project will establish a 'Learning Alliance' where actors from different parts of the value chain and researchers will work together to identify sustainable pathways and facilitate change.