The focus of the seventh of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals is to ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all.
3 billion people on the planet rely on wood, coal, charcoal or animal waste for cooking and heating, and 780 million people lack access to any form of electricity.
According to the UN, energy is the dominant contributor to climate change, accounting for around 60 percent of total global greenhouse gas emissions on the planet today.
Working alongside our partnered projects, this is Plastics Pirates bread and butter. With our scalable proof of concept landing barge, equiped with ScarabTech’s mobile pyrolysis plant – the first of its kind in Australia – and Elemental Water Makers wind-powered desalination plants, we will be able to establish reliable and sustainable modern energy solutions to those who need it most, wherever we land, and virtually free of charge. The oil produced by our on-board pyrolysis plant is almost completely emission-free and is entirely created, and therefore paid for by the plastic collection undertaken by the remote coastal communities we visit. This fuel can then be used locally to provide things like lighting and refrigeration, or be sold back to us, providing plastic waste with a real value to anyone able to collect it.
This is perhaps, in a simple sense, the most symbolic of the SDG’s for us – giving a tangible value to plastic waste as it continues to wash up on the shores of these communities. To provide an avenue to a resource that is sorely lacking by so many, and can make such a huge difference to these communities in multiple aspects of life.
Head over to our website: https://plasticspirate.org to see the the project so far, and keep up to date as we begin documenting the exciting journey of changing the world!
