https://reasonstobecheerful.world/trash-traps-litter-prevention/
"Cigarette butt. Gatorade bottle cap. Part of a Clif Bar wrapper. Cigarette
butt. Fake nail. Styrofoam piece. Drinking straw. Styrofoam piece. Cigarette
butt.
With gloved hands, Mallory Willem sorts quickly and efficiently through trash
pulled from a storm drain in Cedar Key, an island town off Florida’s Gulf
Coast. She pauses to examine the fingernail, painted a chalky lavender color.
“We get a lot of fake nails,” she says, tossing it onto the dull mosaic of
broken-down trash.
Next to her on the sidewalk sits a mesh bag fitted to the storm drain, which
had captured the items that Willem, an undergraduate student at the University
of Florida, and two volunteers were now sifting through. Cedar Key has 10 such
mesh traps installed in storm drains around town, all designed to prevent
litter from entering the local waterways. Once a month, students and volunteers
clean them out, separating manmade trash from organic debris and carefully
logging the types of waste collected. Here, endless cigarette butts and plastic
pieces make up the vast majority.
The project, dubbed Operation TRAP (which stands for Trash Reduction in Aquatic
Preserves), is part of a growing network of groups that use technologies known
as “trash traps” to capture litter before it can wash into streams, rivers and
oceans. Some trash traps are relatively low-tech, like storm drain traps or
booms that stretch across streams to capture floating debris. Others are
cutting-edge, like swimming robots or giant trash wheels that suck trash onto
conveyor belts. The trash captured ranges in size from microplastics up to
mattresses and mangled bikes.
Trash traps have collected more than six million pounds of litter around the
world since 2017, according to the International Trash Trap Network, a joint
effort between the Ocean Conservancy and the University of Toronto to connect
groups that use trash traps. (This number only takes into account data from
groups that are part of the International Trash Trap Network; the real number
is likely higher, says the network’s manager, Hannah De Frond.)
But that’s just a drop in the ocean compared to the rivers of trash —
particularly plastic — that are flowing into our actual oceans every year."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
