MB92 Barcelona, the superyacht refit shipyard located in the port of Barcelona, has announced that it has collected 570kg of waste, the equivalent of 65,000 33cl plastic bottles, over the past year thanks to the two sea binds installed in its facilities.

The MB92 Seabin project, which began in 2019, forms part of the water quality improvement objective of its sustainability plan and was created in order to manage the debris that is transported into the port from the Mediterranean by the tide. The first sea bin was installed in partnership with one of the shipyard’s most environmentally aware customers, 80m MY Talitha, which helped MB92 with the acquisition and installation.

Despite the large quantity of waste collected throughout 2020, the shipyard estimates that in a year without the global pandemic, the figure could have been significantly higher with the yard estimating that as much as 780kg my have been collected.

The Seabin Project was devised by Andrew Turton and Pete Ceglinski in 2015 and started from a simple idea: if there are bins on land, why not install a bin in the water to filter waste from the sea? Over time, the scope of the project evolved into a comprehensive research, technology, and educational initiative with global interest and reach.

The shipyard’s maintenance team is responsible for monitoring and emptying the contents once or twice a day depending on how full they are. The results of the extraction are then sent to the Seabin Project team for analysis and research purposes.

Each sea bin has the capacity to collect about 6kg of waste in its basket, which may not be enough on stormy days or rough seas. The Seabin Project is, therefore, working to improve the results for those days when the tide brings larger amounts of waste, as well as expanding the level of participation in the project to collaborators and ports.

While the addition of sea bins is only a small part of the sustainability puzzle, it is nevertheless always promising to see superyacht businesses doing what they can to further the environmental agenda.

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MB92 Barcelona

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