Before our operations commence, The Ocean Cleanup takes several steps into consideration of local communities, wildlife, and habitats.
Prior to each Interceptor deployment, we work with local and global partners including expert consultants to scan for environmental and social impacts unique to the specific conditions of each river and to comply with local environmental laws and regulations. We commissioned third-party environmental and social impact scanning (ESIS) with Royal Haskoning, Arcadis, and Witteveen+Bos for the existing and upcoming deployment locations.
These reports are shared with the necessary regulatory stakeholders for each project when applicable, but as they involve multiple third parties, which differ for each Interceptor, it is not appropriate for us to publicly share the assessments at this time. For each Interceptor project, we will conduct additional ESIS assessments prior to deployment. Since the approach and depth of the assessments can vary, we are learning how to best conduct, standardize, and share environmental and social impact scanning. Part of this process includes the development of management plans with monitoring and mitigation protocols, including recording occurrences of animal interaction and collected debris composition. This information is used to continuously improve our technology and methodology to reduce impacts.
Considering that we are still developing this process, our intention is to provide more information here in the future, including a summary of the results of existing impact assessments.