The Ocean Cleanup launches follow-up project: the Interceptor
14/11/2019
Every year, millions of tonnes of plastic enter the oceans, of which the majority spills out from rivers. Having mapped all river mouths around the world, the organisation suggests 80% of all plastic pollution comes from just 1,000 rivers.
It claims the Interceptor is the first scalable solution to this problem - through intercepting plastic in rivers before it reaches the oceans.
It is 100% solar-powered, extracts plastic autonomously, and is believed to be capable of operating in the majority of the world’s most polluting rivers.
It works by using a barrier to guide river waste towards its opening, where it is then moved onto a conveyor belt which extracts the pollutants and delivers it to the shuttle. The shuttle then distributes the debris across dumpsters and once it is almost full, at a capacity of up to 50 cubic metres of rubbish, it automatically notifies local operators who then recycle the waste, and the process beings again.
The Ocean Cleanup already has a full fleet of cleanup systems in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, and three operational Interceptors in Southeast Asia. It has now set a target of getting interceptors into all 1,000 rivers in within the next five years.
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