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marine environment? To answer all these questions, we need chemists, biologists, oceanographers and engineers. In Patrick Deixonne s opinion, drawing up a detailed map of these garbage patches by developing the capacities of satellite observation, is crucial to furthering our understanding.

Scientific knowledge is also decisive to raising awareness and mobilising the general public. We need to convince the most important populations: economic and political decision-makers, obviously, but also the younger generation, explains Patrick Deixonne. The NGO organises educational campaigns and exhibitions in schools in France, and provides teachers with digital kits to teach children about the importance of the pollution of the oceans by plastic. Anyone can use the participative application developed by Expédition 7e Continent to document and locate uncontrolled accumulations of waste on land that could eventually reach rivers and then the sea, simply by taking a photo. A geolocalised alert is then sent to NGOs, companies or local authorities involved in the fight against pollution and in waste collection.

The problem is at sea, but the solutions are on land

This is the NGO s motto. The collection of waste at sea on a massive scale will not solve this problem. The root cause

is on land, in our behaviour as consumers, in our modes of industrial production and in the shortcomings of our processes to collect and process waste.

Solutions must be implemented in our regions, our cities, our research institutes, and even by consumers and citizens, that can make a difference, before our waste even finds its way into the oceans. By way of example, Expédition 7e Continent and the Seine-Normandie Water Agency are working together to organise waste collection on the banks of the River Seine by pupils.

But the activist explorer also claims that we must restore the value of plastic by doing away with objects that are immediately disposable, and considering them as a true resource, an idea that demands better collection and sorting, and the development of the know-how required to recycle and reuse plastics.

To this end, Expédition 7e Continent has entered partnerships with a number of economic and industrial players, as well as plastics processing players. The latter can help to introduce effective solutions by developing bioplastics, or less varied plastics that are easier to recycle. Public authorities and environmental companies can also help by investing in wastewater treatment plants that filter plastic micro- particles at the earliest possible stage , adds the seafarer.

We want to federate, he concludes. We must encourage and share our efforts. The technologies that will be deployed on an industrial scale in 10 years are being invented today, together.

In terms of surface area, the North Pacific garbage patch is as big as Europe.

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