From Chennai to Trentino Alto Adige to Baltimore, the inventors are looking for ways to prevent plastic pollution from being picked up from rivers and invading the ocean.
They come in a variety of shapes and sizes, and a Dutch company has added a whale shark-inspired drone that can mix 160 liters of waste.
Both drone projects developed by Ran Marine in Rotterdam were simple, but the checklist was quite long. It needed to be automated, zero emissions, easy to use, economical to deploy and maintain, and cleansable without harming the freshwater environment.
The result is a Waste Shark, approximately 4 feet long, which gently traps debris in the tray between the two pontoons. Like the inspiring whale shark, the grid detects debris and keeps large things out of your mouth until the grid goes down.
When the drone is full, it is returned to the water’s edge and the tray can be easily removed and emptied into a larger container.
The world of river cleaning equipment
There are all sorts of strategies for capturing plastic before it pollutes the ocean. WasteShark is ideal for lakes and other large ponds where most of the garbage flies.
Other challenges and strategies exist in countries around the world. On the Khum River, which runs through the city of Chennai, India, all the equipment AlphaMERS Ltd. used to plan the cleanup had to be able to withstand the monsoon rain floods.
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Their solution was a steel mesh that was covered diagonally across the river to block debris but allow boats to pass unobstructed. The Floating Trash Barrier (FTB) collected 2,200 tonnes of plastic in the first year. AlphaMERS has also developed a drone that purifies oil spills by sieving sludge and separating it from the water inside the robot body.
GNN reported on an innovative Italian solution that is much more portable, affordable and ideal for small rivers and canals. River cleaning is a small buoy fixed to the riverbed by a tether. Passing boats can be knocked in this way, but like the FTB, they always return to the formation diagonally across the water. They are small gears that spin in a stream and push debris into a row of buoys until they reach the bank that enters the collection cage.
In Baltimore, Maryland, the locals’ neighbor, Mr. Trash, is a simple watermill that picks up trash at the estuary and throws it away in a floating barge. Garbage collectors in the eyes of Google swallowed garbage carried in millions of pounds of urban rivers, leading to the creation of several water truck allies, such as trash can captains and trash can professors.
Bojan Slat of the Netherlands, who has raised the awareness of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch for many years and is currently purifying it, is also working on the purification of the river. His non-profit organization, The Ocean Cleanup, suggests that 80% of all marine plastic waste arrives through 1,000 rivers around the world, and his “interceptor” operates on land. It is a large electric barge that is one of the 50 most polluted rivers in the world, like the Malaysian Clan.
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There is a barrier diagonally across the middle of the river so as not to obstruct the passage of boats, garbage is sent to the mouth of the interceptor, where the conveyor belt is found. The belt scoops up the waste and throws it into a large container. When this container is full, it can be unloaded and picked up by most semi-trucks.
People all over the world take the collection of water-generated garbage seriously and they are doing it right. If you’re lucky, the next generation will feature far more happy fish, corals, and humans.
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