A Dutch invention - the Interceptor - is a trash-eating boat which uses floating barriers to feed trash into the boat's mouth where a conveyor belt carries the trash into onboard dumpsters. The boat works autonomously around the clock gathering 50,000kg of debris a day. The boat is powered 100% by solar panels. It automatically alerts onshore teams when it needs emptying. These boats are already working in Indonesia, Malaysia and Vietnam, and will soon start cleaning rivers in Thailand and California.
Source: Thomson Reuters Foundation Trust, 26 October 2019. Read the full article.
A similar invention is WasteShark - a drone which removes trash from the sea in Dubai. It's an aquadrone whichcollects trash in an underwater cage and monitors air and water quality. WasteShark is zero carbon and keeps working around the clock. There're two types of Waste
Sharks: one is autonomous and patrols a defined area, the other is remote-controlled.
Source: GreenMatters, 29 August 2018. Read the full article.
Another Dutch invention uses bubbles to trap plastic trash in rivers. A tube across the riverbed pumps up air and the bubbles form a wall in the water. The wall brings trash to the surface and diverts it to the side where a small container traps it. In tests, the bubble wall caught 86% of trash in the river. The bubble wall doesn't disturb boats, fish and wildlife. And the bubbles do more than just stop trash. The bubbles oxygenate the water, preventing growth of toxic algae. The bubbles also absorb sound from boats, limiting disturbance for fish. Amsterdam is already using bubble walls in a canal and its inventors want to roll it out across the world's rivers.
Source: World Economic Forum, 12 November 2019. Read the full article.