Trash is piling up everywhere, especially in oceans. People just don’t think about how they could get rid of waste properly. They simply throw it, forgetting about the ocean life that suffers when trash accumulates. Something needed to be done about this issue.
Experts have been putting their heads together, searching for ways to address the garbage issue. They have come up with what may be the perfect way to clean up the ocean before the trash destroys the life that thrives underwater.
From Chennai to Trentino Alto, Adige to Baltimore. The trash has been such an issue, and inventors are looking for the many ways to address the plastic pollution from entering the ocean. They do so by collecting these while they lay in riverways.
These come in many shapes and sizes. However, a Dutch company recently added a drone that was inspired by a whale-shark. This has the ability to collect as much as 160 liters of waste along the way. The drone was developed by RanMarine in Rotterdam. While this project was straightforward, it also came with a lot of items on the checklist. First of all, they wanted the design to have the following features: automated, zero-emissions, easy usage, economical especially when it comes to deployment and maintenance, and of course, it had to have the ability to clean a freshwater environment without causing harm.
With all these specifications came WasteShark. The device is around 4 feet in length. It can collect trash without noise. It simply has a tray found between its two pontoons. Because it was truly inspired by a whale shark, a grid stops anything that’s too big from entering the mouth. It only lowers its grid when trash is detected.
As soon as the drone is filled with trash, it’s steered back to the shore where people can easily remove the tray and empty it into a larger repository.
All about Devices that Clean Water
There are so many ways of collecting trash and plastic before these pollute the ocean. WasteShark, on the other hand, is ideally made for lakes and other large ponds because these are places where garbage oftentimes accumulate.
Of course, this isn’t the first of its kind. Other countries employ a variety of strategies. For instance, on the river Cooum where the ater runs through the city of Chennai in India, AlphaMERS Ltd. Makes use of equipment that has the ability to withstand the strong forces of flooding during the monsoon season. What they do is use a steel mesh that is draped diagonally across the flow. The river trash is then collected while boat traffic to pass over without a hitch. In fact, the Floating Trash Barrier (FTB) collected 2,200 tonnes of plastic during its first year of operation. AlphaMERS also have drones that clean up oil spills. It does so by sifting the sludge out before it separates it from the water inside the body.
GNN also recently reported on an innovate Italian solution that is said to be more portable and affordable. This is most ideal for smaller rivers and canals. River Cleaning are little buoys that are anchored to the river bed with the use of tethers. A boat that passes through can knock them in any way without problems because the tethers are designed to bring them back to their intended formation, much like FTB, which sits diagonally across the water. These things have small cogs that spin in the current so that it pushes trash down the line of buoys until these are brought to the water bank where a collection cage collects these.
Then there’s the one they use In Baltimore, Maryland. The locals call this “Mr. Trash Wheel.” This is simply a water mill that can pick up trash that flows to the mouth of a river where these are then placed onto a floating barge. The trash gadget looks like it has a pair of googly eyes and it has been collecting millions of pounds of the city’s river-borne garbage for years. Its inception has brought about the creation of several water-wheel allies such as Capt. Trash Wheel and Prof. Trash Wheel.
The Netherlands also has Bojan Slat. He has been making people aware of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. They have started the cleanup process and have also gone to working on the rivers. His non-profit, The Ocean Cleanup, says that around 80 percent of all the plastic waste in the ocean goes through a thousand of the world’s rivers. He then has his “Interceptor,” a large, shore-operated electric barge, that anchors itself on the side of the 50 most polluted rivers, one of which is Klang in Malaysia.
This is where the barrier is again placed diagonally, half-way across the river. This is done so that boat traffic isn’t affected. The trash is fed into the Interceptor’s mouth. The conveyor belt goes to work as it scoops the waste and brings it into a large container. Once the container is filled, this is offloaded as it awaits for pickup by many semi-trucks on land.
People from many countries are now thinking about water-born trash and how to collect these before the oceans get even more polluted. Many are doing the right thing, and it is with hope that the future folks still get to enjoy the rich marine life.
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