By extending its partnerships, Waste Free Oceans (WFO, Brussels / Belgium; www.wastefreeoceans.org) is strengthening efforts to reduce water pollution. WFO is a non-governmental organisation that aims to remove marine litter by working with fisheries, plastics recyclers and brand owners – see Plasteurope.com of 07.07.2017. Floating plastic litter is removed from bodies of water and then upcycled into products.

Plastinsa (Paterna / Spain; www.plastinsa.com) is a manufacturer of products for the food industry, such as ice buckets, napkin holders, blackboards, menu holders, bottle openers, clocks and displays. It also offers customisation solutions like screen printing, pad printing, lithography, decals and in-mould-labelling. The company has two production sites located in Paterna. About half of its products are made of injected plastics (PS, HDPE and PP) and Plastinsa markets and distributes these Europe-wide as well as to the Americas. The company has also established a subsidiary in Asia, Plastinsa Hong Kong.

Recently, WFO also announced a partnership with Henkel (Düsseldorf / Germany; www.henkel.com), to transform plastics waste into more than 1m bottles for the company's "Lovables" brand. WFO said the collaboration is the organisation's largest to date, and will run for a minimum of three years. Henkel and WFO aim to remove enough plastic from rivers, lakes, seas and oceans to produce 100 t/y of usable recycled material. To begin, plastics waste will be collected from the Danube River in spring 2018, with target locations including Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania. Volunteers will gather plastics waste from river banks and beaches, while fishing boats equipped with a special trawl net will remove floating waste. The trawlers are able to collect between 2-8 t of litter on each journey. During summer 2018, there are additional collection activities planned for several locations in the Mediterranean Sea.