Every year, millions of tons of plastic waste pour into the sea, most of them come from around 1,000 very polluted rivers. And with the overall waste generation ready to increase more than 75% in 2050, the problem will only deteriorate.

Companies around the world have diverted their attention to river waste problems, building various obstacles, fences, and wheels that help hold and eliminate garbage when flowing downstream.

The approach ranges from solar -powered barges to stainless steel fences, and different rivers will require different methods.

These are three companies, Clearwater Mills, Ocean Cleanup, and Alphamers approaching the problem.

Clearwater Mills Garbage Wheel

The wheel of GOOGLY Baltimore -eyed garbage, the first to debut in 2014, is one of the original efforts to overcome river waste. Built by Clearwater Mills, the founder of the company John Klulett was inspired to design wheels after years to see garbage flowing to the Port of Baltimore after a large storm.

“We have a Mr. Trash Wheel, Captain Trash Wheel, Professor of Trash Wheel and Gwynnda Roda that is good in the West here in Baltimore,” said Kellett, quoting the names of anthropomorfation wheels that have become small social media celebrities in the city.

This is how it works: the detention boom is arranged in the form across the river, with a rubber skirt that extends about two feet below the surface of the water. This captures the garbage that floats downstream and channels it to the “mouth” of the rotating water wheel, which is powered by the current river and solar panels. The rotation of the wheel gives the strength of the conveyor belt that lifts garbage and debris out of the river and stores it into a trash can. The installed camera allows the team to monitor how full the trash is.

“And when the trash can is full, we have another floating barge that we carry with an empty trash. Remove the full, empty sliding and continue to take the trash,” Kellett said.

The four wheels have taken a total of around 2,000 tons of rubbish and debris. Sticks and leaves form most of this weight because the plastic is very light, but the whole transportation covers about 1.5 million plastic bottles, 1.4 million foam containers and 12.6 million cigarette butts. Everything is then burned in waste-to-energy facilities.

Additional garbage wheels are planned for Texas, California, and even Panama, where the local non -profit of Marea Verde has partnered with Clearwater Mills to build a fifth wheel in the family, named Wanda Díaz. The project is funded by Benioff Ocean Initiative and Coca-Cola Foundation, which together supports the portfolio of river cleaning projects throughout the world.

Sea cleaning

Ocean’s cleaning may be famous for his efforts to clean the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, an attempt by the young founder of the Slat boyan company began to pursue in 2013 after the ted talks he gave on the topic became viral. The company is now pursuing a double focus because it also built a series of river cleaning technology.

“Our goal is to get rid of the plastic sea, and the reason why we see the river is because we believe it is the fastest and most effective way to prevent plastic further emitted into the sea,” Slat said.

The company’s first river cleaning device, called The Original Interceptor, was released in 2019. This is a solar -powered barge that operates like the Baltimore waste wheel, only on a larger scale. Sitting on the mouth of the river, the garbage funnel to the conveyor belt and automatically distributes waste in six giant trash bins.

But because this giant interceptor is not suitable in a smaller river, the team develops other solutions, the independent floating barrier to capture waste, and a small mobile conveyor belt that scoops up trash and transports it to the trash on land. This system is currently mobilized at Kingston Harbor, Jamaica, where the slat says the river is too narrow for the original interception.

And for the most angry river, there is trashfence. The concept is simple. 26 feet steel fences anchored to the bottom of the river and stop the flow of garbage during a large storm. After the height of the water recedes, the excavator removes waste. But garbage attacks on one of the most polluted rivers in the world in Guatemala proved too intense for version 1.0.

“The power of waste is very high so that the garbage fence fails, unfortunately,” said Slat. “So we are now working on version two which is expected to be ready for the next rainy season.”

Eight intercepts of sea cleaning are currently installed in Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, Dominican Republic and Jamaica. Slat hopes that around 20 will be installed next year, including one in Los Angeles.

Alphamers

Alphamers based in India made another version of a simple river barrier and had 34 installations in eight different cities throughout the country. This is much smaller than the sea cleaning trashfence, and is not designed for the same extreme waste flow, but it is still quite heavy task. Made of mesh stainless steel, Alfamers floats a few meters above water and dipping about 16 inches below.

“Hydrodynamics and hydrostatic are very simple but very good for the work,” said the founder of Alphamers D.C. Sekhar. “And it was made very rough, very heavy with the steel chain holding it on both sides. So it can hold monsoon flowing immediately after the rain. “

Sekhar said the floating fence was superior to stop garbage in the river with fast currents, while the design that depends on the explosion and the skirt may fail when the current takes, because the water will actually flow above the barrier, carrying trash with it.

Eight floating obstacles were mobilized at various points along the Cooum River in Chennai in 2017. Sekhar said they caught around 2,400 tons of plastic in the first year of their operation.

The obstacle is tilted to direct the garbage to the riverbank, where the excavator traditionally picks rubbish from the river. Alphamers have used a conveyor belt instead, such as Clearwater Mills and Ocean Cleanup.

“One end is floating, one end is on land,” said Sekhar about the intermediary belt. “And now it is run with electric power, with a portable generator. But soon we will run it with river water flow. “

The future of waste

These organizations have the same goal to eliminate as many waste as possible from our lives, but they all also understand the river cleaning system is not the main solution.

“One of the things that we look forward to is when the wheel of garbage is no longer needed,” said Kellett. “When we overcome problems upstream as far as there is no garbage that enters our waterway and we don’t need to have a garbage wheel.”

Getting there will be difficult and will depend on some of the combinations of better waste infrastructure, more sustainable packaging, less consumption, and public awareness about the right disposal.

Medium-income countries such as the Philippines, India and Malaysia contributed the biggest to oceanic waste. The population has enough money to buy a lot of packaged items, but the infrastructure for the collection of waste is underdeveloped.

Sandy Watemberg, executive director of Marea Verde Nonerba, was very happy that her organization had brought Wanda Díaz Trash Wheel to Panama and was optimistic about her performance in the future.

“So we really hope that this will be a huge success for our country,” said Watemberg. However, he knows that real change will take longer.

“Having this technology and this type of project is not a solution. We need to change our habits. We need to find a long -term solution that allows us to have a cleaner and healthier environment because this type of project helps us create awareness and help us mitigate in the short and medium term. But in the end, this is not something that is sustainable. We cannot have thousands of projects like this running forever. “