Project STOP wins oil and gas industry award

Project STOP, an initiative that partners with cities to stop plastic waste leaking into the ocean, has received the Social Contribution and Local Content Project of the Year Award at the ADIPEC Awards 2019.

These awards recognize outstanding contributions to the future of the oil and gas industry. The award was received at a ceremony in Abu Dhabi on Nov. 11.

Material supplier Borealis and SYSTEMIQ co-founded Project STOP in 2017. Other firms have since joined, including Calgary-based Nova Chemicals Corp., Borouge, the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Nestlé, and the Alliance to End Plastic Waste.

Project STOP aims to achieve zero leakage of waste into the environment, recycle more plastics, and create benefits, including jobs, for the local community. Through its “system enabler” approach, a team of local and international experts help cities to design and implement a low-cost and more circular waste management system. This leads to plastic waste being recycled into new products, helping to fund waste collection and sorting.

The first Project STOP city partnership, in Muncar, Indonesia, started in 2018, and to date more than 1,800 tonnes of waste has been collected, creating 60 full-time jobs.

“We are pleased to see the progress Project STOP is making to find innovative solutions to solve the issue of plastic waste and promote a plastics circular economy in Indonesia,” Nova CEO Todd Karran said in a statement. “As a strategic partner of Project STOP and a founding member of the Alliance to End Plastic Waste, we know businesses like ours can be a positive catalyst for change. Working together, we can shape a world that is even better tomorrow than it is today.”