trash – No Cape Required

Sea Bins – Another tool for cleaning trash from our lakes and oceans

By OneWorld | November 3, 2022 | Comments 0 Comment

People have designed several ingenious ways to capture trash that is in our waterways. Of course, preventing it from getting there in the first place would be the best option but failing that, we need effective ways to remove it. A post from the World Economic Forum highlights Sea Bins. Each bin can capture 90,000 plastic bags a year.

That is a lot of plastic out of our waterways but it still is only a dent in the approximately 8 million tons of plastic that ends up in the ocean yearly. The Seabin Project, maker of the Sea Bins, is a cleantech startup trying to help solve the global problem of ocean plastic pollution. Their Sea Bins act like floating trash cans, collecting garbage, oil, fuel, and detergents. The idea is to skim floating debris from harbours before it enters the ocean.

Learn more: http://ow.ly/cBY550Lp86w

Simple Ideas – Big Results

By OneWorld | October 29, 2022 | Comments 0 Comment

Nets over drainage outlets in Australia prevent plastic waste from entering bodies of water. Although the mesh holes are too large to capture microplastics which are becoming a major problem, the nets capture all types of debris that would otherwise be difficult to clean up once loose in a body of water. It also captures both floating trash and items that would sink.

Other countries have used many other simple techniques to capture and remove trash including floating barriers and autonomous drones that scoop up debris into a large sack.

While none of these ideas remove 100% of debris, they each make a significant dent in keeping our waterways clean.

Nets over drainage outlets in Australia prevent plastic waste from entering bodies of water.

Bio-Fences are an innovative use of trash to help resolve the trash problem

By OneWorld | May 13, 2018 | Comments 0 Comment

by BJ Moore

Imagine a line of trash trucks dumping their loads into the ocean, a truckload each minute. Hard to imagine, yes, but that is the amount of trash landing in the ocean day in, day out. Guateamala is using plastic bottles and nets to create bio-fences to stretch across rivers to capture trash floating on the surface of the water. These bio-fences have helped reduce the amount of trash in the sea by 60% in the areas where used. These inexpensive measures along with people picking up trash from beaches and recycling can make a difference.

Every bit of plastic we can keep out or remove from the ocean is important, but large scale work still needs to be done. Annually, 100,000 sea mammels and nearly one million birds die from eating or becoming entangled in plastic. Almost 2/3rds of the world’s fish have ingested plastic, causing harm to the fish and bringing plastic and its chemicals into our food chain.

Learn more about plastic waste: https://wef.ch/2qYKCbI

Tag: trash