The Water Defenders Alliance offers solutions to prevent and combat pollution in the Mediterranean Sea, including a sponge that absorbs hydrocarbons.
Oil slicks at sea tend to make the news only when major accidents occur. We all remember the Deepwater Horizon oil platform disaster, the most serious in United States history. But the truth is that hydrocarbon spills, even in "our" Mediterranean Sea, are more frequent than one might think. Sometimes they trigger a massive deployment of resources; other times they go unnoticed. Alongside plastic pollution and habitat protection, this is one of the pillars of the Water Defenders Alliance, the alliance for the defence of the sea conceived and coordinated by LifeGate.
Every year, around 200,000 ferries, cargo ships and commercial vessels sail the Mediterranean Sea. Approximately three hundred tankers carry petroleum products on a daily basis, with the quantity estimated at 350 million tonnes per year. These figures come from the Istituto superiore per la protezione e la ricerca ambientale (Ispra). It is again Ispra that states that every year the Mediterranean Sea is subjected to hydrocarbon spills of around 600,000 tonnes. Over the past thirty years, 27 accidents alone have discharged around 272,000 tonnes of crude oil into its waters.
"Apart from catastrophic episodes, there are almost daily small hydrocarbon leaks at sea linked to the emptying of bilge water and to refuelling operations on pleasure craft," notes marine biologist Emilio Mancuso. Not to mention the accidental and deliberate release of diesel, solvents, lubricants and other petroleum products by industrial facilities or even private individuals. The Encyclopædia Britannica maintains that these episodes, taken together, discharge into the water every year a quantity of oil of between 3.5 and 6 million tonnes. The problem is that it takes just one litre of oil to contaminate one million litres of water.
We all remember the images of gulls coated in thick black liquid and dead fish on the shoreline, right through to the iridescence we often see on the surface of our waters. And these are only some of the consequences — the visible ones — that oil spills cause to biodiversity.
"Hydrocarbons have extremely negative effects on marine ecosystems," continues Emilio Mancuso, who is also president of the social enterprise Verdeacqua. "Just consider the large quantities of hydrocarbons that end up causing intoxication and entanglement problems in large animals, because they physically find themselves in the middle of them. From large vertebrates, the effects extend all the way down to tiny invertebrates that are killed by poisoning. Once eaten, the latter enter food webs: due to the well-known effects of bioaccumulation, animals with longer life cycles and larger body sizes feed on contaminated organisms, accumulating high concentrations of these substances in their tissues. In short, hydrocarbon pollution affects every level of the food web and therefore the entire marine ecosystem."
Of course, humans can do their best to clean oil from the sea. But these costly operations are only organised following major accidents, losing sight of all those smaller yet incessant discharges. Moreover, their effectiveness is limited. After the Deepwater Horizon disaster, with an impressive deployment of resources and billions of dollars spent, it was possible to recover around 20 per cent of the spilled crude oil.
"In ports too you notice the slicks, turned rainbow-coloured by iridescence, which are very difficult to clean up. The vast majority aren't even visible because, through a degradation process known as weathering, they spread and disperse within a short space of time," explains Alessandro Taini, CEO and founder of T1 Solutions. "What's more, among the most widely used methods for recovering oil at sea are polypropylene absorbent mats: but this is single-use plastic that breaks up into fragments saturated with oil."
With his T1 Solutions, Taini provides a valid and extremely simple-to-use alternative: a sponge. It is called FoamFlex200 and is a patented polyurethane foam that absorbs hydrocarbons of every kind. Just one kilogram is enough to capture 6,000 kilograms of hydrocarbons. When saturated, it is wrung out. The Brescia-based company has built dedicated machines that carry out this operation electrically, pneumatically, or — in emergency conditions — manually. This allows each sponge to be reused up to 200 times.
"The startup was founded in 2014 and spent several years on scientific research, certifications and field tests," Alessandro Taini tells LifeGate. "In 2018, Professor Jesus Cisneros Aguirre of the University of Las Palmas persuaded the administration to adopt our technology. Three months later, a disaster struck." Hurricane Emma hit Fuerteventura, sinking many vessels moored in the port of Gran Tarajal and causing the spillage of 150 tonnes of various types of hydrocarbons. The entire clean-up operation required just 70 kilograms of FoamFlex200 and two manual wringers.
"Since then we have also carried out other operations, for example in the Lake Garda area, in Palau in Sardinia, and at the Porto del Granatello in Portici. In all these cases, our material proved crucial." But the particular strength of these sponges is that they also prove useful in everyday situations. Any leisure boater can equip themselves with a handy kit for absorbing hydrocarbons and then handing them in at port. The recovered oil could also be reintroduced into certain production cycles, in line with a circular economy approach.
The kits for leisure boaters are among the solutions proposed by the Water Defenders Alliance, founded in June 2023. Conceived and coordinated by LifeGate, the alliance brings together companies, individuals, research organisations, ports and institutions that wish to commit to protecting the Mediterranean Sea.
A mission that unfolds across three areas of intervention. On the first — plastic in the sea — there is already a solid body of experience built up over the five years of LifeGate PlasticLess, with the installation of around a hundred plastic-eating devices in Italy and beyond. The second area is, precisely, hydrocarbon pollution in the Mediterranean Sea. Joining the Water Defenders Alliance therefore means contributing to the distribution of kits both for recreational boaters and fishing vessels, and for ports. The third and final area, lastly, is the protection of marine habitats, threatened by pollution, the presence of invasive alien species and climate change.
To find out more: https://waterdefenders.it/