MERLIN Innovation Awards celebrates cutting-edge approaches to freshwater restoration at 2025 ceremony

The winners of the annual MERLIN Innovation Awards – which highlight state-of-the-art solutions for freshwater restoration – were announced earlier this month.

Entries from organisations across the world were assessed by an expert panel, and shortlists for the two categories – Service of the Year and Product of the Year – were compiled. Two winners were announced at a busy online ceremony on February 13th.

MIA Service of the Year: River Cleanup

The winner of the MIA Service of the Year is River Cleanup, a Belgian non-profit organisation which empowers global communities to cleanup their rivers. The idea behind the project was sparked in 2017, when founder Thomas de Groote was challenged to do a ten minute cleanup of plastic waste in his local area each day for ten days. Thomas dressed up as a superhero, convinced his children to help him, and the idea for River Cleanup was born.

“I can recommend it to everybody: if you ever have that moment, just say yes, because it completely saved my life,” Thomas reflects. “And to me now, it feels that my purpose here on this planet is to do this. It doesn’t feel like a job or a task to do: its just a huge problem, which is almost impossible to solve. But I feel in every vein that that we are going to do it, or at least, we will make a huge contribution to solving it.”

The project grew rapidly, with 10,000 people joining cleanups along the Rhine in 2018, and international growth across ten rivers in Europe and Asia following River Cleanup’s official formation in 2019. The appetite for removing plastic from waterways continued apace, with over two million kilograms of plastic removed from rivers globally in 2022, and work being carried out in one hundred countries by 2023.

“Everybody can be involved,” Thomas explains. “That really stands for the togetherness of people, companies and governments taking action, because often people blame the companies, companies blame the people, and we all say the government needs to do this, and nothing really happens. So that’s why I like to take action and, inspire and motivate everybody, on this planet to become part of the solution. We do it on a very positive, inclusive and impact-driven way.”

River Cleanup has developed a Clean River Model to tackle the root causes of river pollution. The model is based on empowering communities to take action, preventing single-use plastics from reaching waterways, and supporting policy change.

“This model is a highly scalable and holistic approach where it’s not only about cleaning up the river, its about community awareness,” says Thomas. “We go to schools: that’s really our entry point for the community. We look at local leaders so they speak the local language and they’re really from there.

“Then we focus on prevention by reducing single-use plastics and putting in collection systems for post-consumer waste,” Thomas continues. “Cleanup is still important, but it’s also about stopping the plastic getting into the rivers in the first place. And then the last step is accelerate accelerating change, where we work with governments.”

Thomas highlights the role of the MERLIN Innovation Awards and Marketplace in helping bring wider communities together to support river restoration: “It’s amazing to get this prize. It’s another step in getting more people to know who we are, what we do, and how they can contribute. We see our holistic approach as the innovation: we’re bringing people and ideas together and it’s good that it was recognised by the jury members.”

“Our goal is to be working across one thousand rivers across the world, supporting teams working on making their river plastic free,” Thomas says. “And doing that through our platform, where everybody’s contributing and where partners also can find projects and where the whole world is collaborating.

“The dream would be to include everybody who wants to contribute: everyone who can find the energy to help solve these problems,” he continues. “You have to make your plan and then do it and then learn by doing. And on the way, you will you will gain so much experience and you will adapt and then you can finally succeed.”

Product of the Year: Wasser 3.0 PE-X®

The winner of the MIA Product of the Year is Wasser 3.0 for their innovative approach to removing microplastics from water.

“Microplastic pollution is a growing problem,” says Katrin Schuhen, Managing Director of Wasser 3.0. “These tiny particles come from products such as cosmetics and vehicle tyres. They are also shed into the water when we wash polyester clothing and are produced through many types of manufacturing. Contrary to many assumptions, microplastic pollution does not begin in the ocean, it starts on land where products are being produced and used.”

Microplastics – which can originate from tyres, textiles, cosmetics and the breakdown of larger plastic items – are a rapidly growing environmental issue, now found even in the most remote and inaccessible places on Earth, and causing concern for both ecological and human health.

The Wasser 3.0 PE-X® technology provides a modular process for the removal of microplastics from water. Polluted water is run through a mixing tank where microplastics collects in clumps around a special silicone-based chemical compound. These waste clumps can then be reused in house and road construction, and the clean water returned to the environment.

“We are looking for the early adopters, the companies who want to be part of the transformation from now to the future,” Katrin says. “We have industries who are working with us doing the piloting, doing the long-term studies, bringing all the data together, building their sustainability upgraded processes, and becoming future-proof.”

“Responsibility is there on the one hand, and the other is the economic benefit,” she says. “Because if you can build circular processes, you can directly reduce the costs by, for example, re-using processed waters, then the industries become interested in the technology.”

“Winning the MERLIN Innovation Award 2025 for Product of the Year is hopefully an impact accelerator for our microplastic analytics and removal technology,” Katrin explains. “The MIA increases the visibility of the microplastics issue in the environment and links the problem to responsible solutions and products, together with regulations and laws that monitor the entry of microplastics into the environment and measures to prevent it.”

The MERLIN Innovation Awards celebrates new and widely-applicable solutions for restoring freshwater ecosystems. The awards – organised by project partner Connectology – recognise the need for restoration projects to better engage with economic markets to support transformative ecological improvements.

You can find out about the ten shortlisted projects, and the expert jury who selected them.

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This article is supported by the MERLIN project.