Swimming for sustainability: Arburg sponsors cleandanube project

Arburg is supporting the ‘cleandanube’ project initiated and co-organised by Furtwangen University, Germany.

At the launch event at the source of the Danube (Donauquelle) in Southwest Germany on 19 April, Professor of Chemistry at Furtwangen University Andreas Fath received a small single-lever injection moulding machine from Arburg in addition to the financial support.

Fath will swim the length of the Danube from Ulm, beginning 22 April, to the Black Sea (~2,700km) by 17 June in order raise awareness of microplastic pollution and the need for water conservation.

Bertram Stern, Sustainability Manager at Arburg, said: “We are committed to this project because sustainability and a careful approach to the environment and water resources are enormously important. Also, and particularly in our capacity as a manufacturer of machines for plastics processing, we want to draw attention to the fact that plastic is not waste, but a valuable material that must be collected, recycled and reused.”

Plastic-free Danube

It is thought that the Danube carries more than four tonnes of plastic into the Black Sea every day, much of it in the form of microplastics. Fath will cross ten countries – Germany, Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania, Moldova and Ukraine – and, at stations along the route, will use group learning activities and workshop to draw attention to pollution in the Danube.

There will also be a variety of campaigns such as clean-ups, swim-alongs and and lectures at each station. Water samples will be regularly analysed in a mobile laboratory and published on the project website, which also features live tracking.

Alongside Arburg, this transnational project is supported by Hansgrohe, internationally renowned manufacturer of products for bathrooms and kitchens, and non-profit association Menschen brauchen Menschen e.V., sponsored by Deutsche Vermögensberatung.

Injection moulding on tour

Accompanying Professor Fath on his swim will be a small single-lever injection moulding machine from Arburg, which will then be retained for teaching purposes. The machine is modelled on the very first injection moulding model made by former company bosses Eugen and Karl Hehl and took a team of five trainees around 1,000 hours to recreate at Arburg’s headquarters in Lossburg. At the various stages, visitors will be able to use it to make shopping trolley chips from recycled polypropylene, and the project team will distribute gym bags made from rPET that visitors can use to collect donations for children escaping war in Ukraine.