Coastal Material Hub. An Integrated System for the Removal, Valorization, and Financing of Marine Plastic. System Analysis, Concept, Implementation Plan, Cost Estimate, and Financing Model

Abstract Removal of plastics from seas and tributaries is often framed as a problem of individual machines. This paper argues that the binding constraint is not separation technology but the missing integration of collection, valorization, verification, and finance. It belongs to a series of concept studies within the Omegacene program, which examines the conditions under which intelligent systems begin to read and rewrite their own foundations. Within that frame, marine plastic is the test case for one of the four ways in which orders fail: the sink. Every order discharges its disorder somewhere else, into another country, another century, a body of water that does not count, and whoever does not know where has no ledger but a feeling. The regional Coastal Material Hub proposed here is an attempt to turn a sink into a ledger: every kilogram is weighed, identified by polymer, assigned to a valorization pathway, and independently audited. Drawing on peer-reviewed evidence on microplastic distribution, ecological assessment of cleanup, wastewater filtration, pyrolysis, enzymatic and mechanical recycling, and operational cost data from existing cleanup programs, a modular system is developed. It links targeted retrieval of fishing gear, river interception, load-dependent microplastic separation at polluted point sources, and closed-loop processing into separate valorization pathways. For a reference case of 250 tonnes of dry plastic per year, capital costs of EUR 7 to 12 million and operating costs of EUR 2.2 to 3.9 million per year are estimated (±40 percent). Resulting full costs of about EUR 12 to 22 per kilogram exceed the modeled open-ocean cleanup costs in the North Pacific of about EUR 10 per kilogram, but include recycling, a microplastic pathway, and verification. Material revenues cover only about 3 to 13 percent of operating costs. Environmental performance must therefore be financed as a verified service in its own right. A financing mix of EU programs, national and regional funds, extended producer responsibility for fishing gear, outcome-based contracts, and limited material revenues is proposed. Plastic credits are considered only as a supplement under strict additionality and valorization criteria. For each of its core assumptions, the study states what would refute it.