Once a 'best project' for cleanup, India program shuts down Screenshot of Vimeo video by National Geographic/AEPW/Renew Oceans A Renew Oceans community relations workers (standing) talks with two people in a waste sorting facility. Renew Oceans, one of the founding projects of the industry's $1.5 billion Alliance to End Plastic Waste, has ground to a halt, with organizers saying it is a victim of the pandemic and growing doubts the project could get to the size needed to succeed. It launched as an effort targeted at cleaning up the Ganges River in India, but from the beginning it was seen by the plastics industry as something more ambitious that they could take worldwide.