Tallinn University of Technology (TTU) is the flagship of Estonian engineering and technology education and research creating synergy between the technological, natural, exact, economic, and health sciences. Department of Marine Systems is an education, research and development unit in the School of Science of TTU. Research topics of the Department are related to marine physics, ecology, pollution control, coastal planning, remote sensing and mathematical modelling.

TTU leads the task to assemble data on visible and invisible plastic litter, including data from existing databases, data collected during the project for model validation purposes and data on litter sources in the Baltic area. TTU has the responsibility for characterization of the baseline in the Baltic experimental area, testing the cleaning/measuring device on board the research vessel equipped with a flow-through system and run the measurements along the ferry line Tallinn-Helsinki in the Baltic Sea (Gulf of Finland).

TTU owns the research vessel SALME equipped with a flow-through system measuring various environmental parameters and able to collect samples from the surface layer, runs a Ferrybox system between Tallinn and Helsinki (Gulf of Finland, Baltic Sea), has access to large IT systems for data management and modelling, and has Manta trawl and lab facilities for microlitter analyses.