The navigator and president of the association The SeaCleaners Yvan Bourgnon announced Tuesday, January 26 on franceinfo that a giant catamaran “75% autonomous in terms of energy will go to clean up the oceans from 2024” and called to go beyond “awareness, not sufficient to be able to eradicate the problem” pollution of the seas.
franceinfo: How well is your ship supposed to clean the oceans?
Yvan Bourgnon: The concept has already existed since 2016, but we are happy to announce today that we have reached the end of 20,000 hours of studies, and that we are sure of being able to produce this giant catamaran which will go from 2024 to clean up the oceans. . We had technical certainties and today, the more the years go on, the more we manage to consolidate the project. And what’s great about the past two years is that we’ve managed not only to build a boat that is 75% energy self-sufficient, but above all, it manages to process waste. We have a real factory on board inside the boat and that is really the novelty, before actually announcing the manufacture of this boat which will start in 2022. This ship is a giant of the seas. Its means of propulsion is mainly sailing, which is what makes the project quite virtuous. The boat is 56 meters long, has a collection capacity of 46 meters wide, with the help of conveyor belts which bring up waste from the boat and nets outside boats which also collect plastics. We have a collection capacity of 5 to 10,000 tonnes of plastics per year, or about one to three tonnes per hour. This is considerable, we already manage to eliminate a good part of the pollution with a few hundred boats like this one.
It’s considerable, but plastic pollution represents tens of millions of tons per year?
Critics will tell you that it is a bottomless pit and that pollution will increase in the coming years. But what is certain is that the work being done to raise awareness and to take action on the ground is not sufficient to be able to eradicate the problem. On the contrary, in 2060, there will be three times more plastics in the oceans. We are talking about 30 million tonnes of plastics in the ocean.
“Just sitting idly by saying that it costs less to raise awareness rather than fundraising is not enough.”
Yvan Bourgnon, president of The SeaCleaners association
to franceinfo
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It’s as if today we were saying that we stop sorting, we stop garbage trucks, we stop collecting waste on earth, we are going to educate people, and they will eat compostable, they will stop consuming plastic is heresy. We must act on land and at sea. And to see people still today, who deny that, who stand idly by, who let this pollution go into the oceans, is irresponsible. We have to find solutions for that.
Your boat will be launched in 2024, where will it be built and do you need financing?
We have completed a third of the way to finance 30 million that will cost the first catamaran. We have a second third of the way to go before construction begins, in the next two years. So, it is true that we are calling all large companies and even small ones to join us, there are already 50 patrons who have trusted us when the project was not certain. We have a construction that will take place in Europe, certainly a steel hull that will be done more in Poland or Turkey. And we are doing everything to ensure that all the integration of renewable energy technologies takes place in France. We are in particular in contact with shipyards in the Atlantic. Anyway, it is a cocorico project: all the studies were carried out in France. We now have 20 technical partners, including two grandes écoles such as the École Navale de Brest and Centrale Nantes, which are involved in the project. We really managed to use all the French and Swiss technologies to be able to bring this project to the end.
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