ABOUT HAMBURG
The city of Hamburg, known for its port and Hanseatic trade, is located in northern Germany directly on the Elbe River, less than a 100 miles upstream from the North Sea. Having even more bridges than Amsterdam and Venice combined, Hamburg is not only located on the water, but is virtually water infused. This clearly makes Hamburg an important place in the fight against plastic-based water pollution.
Our local BlueCommunities partners are Initiative Plastich and Oclean, NGO´s that take action to keep their city clean and raise awareness about waste.
LOCAL GOALS
UNITED NATIONS SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS
OUR LOCAL PARTNERS
Initiative Plastich (derived from Hamburg slang for plastics), is conformed by a group of students covering a wide range of disciplines from engineering over social sciences to art. Their discomfort with society’s shortsighted handling with plastics is what unites them. They believe creating awareness is key in tackling the global thread of plastic pollution. They organize participatory cleanups and workshops and publish comprehensive information. In doing this, they strive to be inclusive and to reach all groups of people, regardless of education and budget.
OClean uses various formats to explain the topic of waste, plastic and how to handle it. In order to achieve this, they organize public waste collection campaigns for everyone in the city of Hamburg, Social Days for companies, offer Consciousness Classes (workshops) in the B2B and educational sector and organize Consciousness Events (e.g. clothes-swapping event, sustainable Christmas market, etc.).
OClean wants to encourage a rethinking in the handling of our resources and the environment in an easily accessible way.
INNOVATIVE WASTE MANAGEMENT
With nearly 800,000 tons of waste being burned in Hamburg each year, there is still little awareness of waste recycling. As a result, waste separation is practised, if at all, on a very basic level. Initiative Plastich wants to use the role model role of universities in society and build an innovative waste separation concept on our campuses. The aim is to take waste separation to a new level. They will go beyond the usual three-way separation and develop a separation system that addresses the resource needs of our local industry. A prototype separation container will be designed by us and placed on the campus of the Hamburg University of Technology. If the concept works out, further installations are planned.
OUR SOCIAL DAYS – CLEAN UP INSTEAD OF BOWLING.
Oclean offers you and your team the opportunity to do good for the environment outdoors, wherever you want. For example, in front of the entrance of your company. According to your wishes they organize an individual Clean Up action for you and your colleagues. It is not only about collecting garbage. The joint undertaking also brings karma points, strengthens the team spirit and puts you in a really good mood. The whole thing can be combined with a lecture, a quiz or even a workshop.
MAP THE DRECK
Initiave Plastich’s “Map the Dreck” is an app to be designed to allow people to perform decentralized and individual cleanups on a whim. With the app, people will be able to register polluted places. They take a photo of the spot and the photo is geotagged on the map. Other people with spare time and the mood of doing a cleanup track dirty places in the app, borrow the equipment from one of our cooperation partners and clean the place. Reporting dirty places and performing cleanups will increase your high score. The people with the highest scores will be regularly rewarded with attractive and ecological gifts. This will turn cleanups into a fun hobby and expand the target group to include people who are not otherwise involved with environmental protection. Using short questionnaires, the app will furthermore collect important data for putting pressure on authorities and industry.