Project title: MARine Litter cross-border awarenESS and innovation actions
Acronym: MARLESS
Programme: Interreg V-A Italy-Croatia CBC Programme
Lead partner: Regional Agency for Environmental Protection and Prevention of the Veneto Region
Project partners: Regional Agency DUNEA, University of Dubrovnik, Veneto region, Friuli Venezia Giulia Region, Apulia and Emilia-Romagna Region, University of Bologna, NGO Cetacea Foundation, Ministry of Economy and Sustainable Development, Center for Marine Research of the Ruđer Bošković Institute, Istrian Regional Energy agency and Istria County
Project duration: 06/06/2020 - 31/12/2022
Project budget: 4.244.726,00 EUR
DUNEA budget: 203.053,00 EUR
About the project:
MARLESS project is an environmental synergic action that deals with the problem of waste in the Adriatic Sea. Among many activities, work will be done on marine litter amounts monitoring, raising citizens' awareness, pilot activities of innovative solutions aimed at testing experimental processes of removing debris from the ocean, as well as cross-border integrated management to reduce waste entering the Adriatic Sea.
MARLESS was registered and approved through the strategic call of the INTERREG Italy-Croatia programme 2014-2020, and the project holder is the Regional Agency for Environmental Protection and Prevention of the Veneto Region (IT) with 12 other regional and national partners from Croatia and Italy. Thanks to this project, 4.5 million HRK has been provided for the Dubrovnik-Neretva County area, with Regional Agency DUNEA and the University of Dubrovnik as part of partner consortium, including the Ministry of Economy and Sustainable Development (HR), Friuli Venezia Giulia Region (IT), Cetacea Foundation (IT), University of Bologna (IT), Ruđer Bošković Institute (HR), Istria County (HR), Istrian Regional Energy Agency IRENA (HR), Apulia Region (IT), Veneto Region (IT) and Region Emilia-Romagna (IT).
In this project, through the organization of numerous events and activities, Regional agency DUNEA focuses on marine litter problematic awareness-raising and the huge risks it brings, while the University of Dubrovnik, as an expert scientific institution, contributes to the project through an interdisciplinary approach of the Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering and the Department of Applied Ecology, in designing a robot that identifies, collects and sorts waste from the sea surface.
The total value of the project is 31,835,445.00 million HRK, with 85 percent co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund in the amount of 27,060,128.00 million HRK, the estimated duration of the project is the end of December 2022.
