Page 12 - aruba-today-20220620

A12 SCIENCE
Monday 20 June 2022
River trash traps chew at huge ocean

plastics problem

Leipzig, Germany, wrote in
an email.
D.C. Sekhar of Bengaluru,
India, designed a low-tech
trap for rivers in his coun-
try after he left a career in
commercial shipping.
As an oil tanker captain, “I
had traveled around the
world and seen waterbod-
ies that were fairly clean,”
while trash fouled India’s,
he said.
Wanting something modu-
lar, inexpensive, easy to
Mr. Trash Wheel, a mechanism that collects trash from tributaries maintain and able to with-
that feed into Baltimore’s Inner Harbor sits in the water, Friday, stand monsoons, he de-
May 13, 2022, in Baltimore. signed stainless steel mesh
Associated Press fences that extend above
By JANET McCONNAUGHEY our big open oceans and and below aluminum floats
Associated Press collect the trash there,” 3.9 feet (1.2 meters) long.
Floating fences in India. said Director Nancy Wal- Sekhar’s AlphaMERS Ltd.
Whimsical water- and solar- lace. “We’d much rather has installed big floating
driven conveyor belts with collect that trash closer to barriers across rivers at
googly eyes in Baltimore. shore, which is easier. It’s eight southern cities from
Rechargeable aquatic less costly, and we can Hyderabad to Tuticorin.
drones and a bubble bar- have that impact before it Each is angled to guide
rier in The Netherlands. gets into the ocean.” trash to a riverbank where
These are some of the so- Trash is blown, washed or excavators pile it into
phisticated and at times thrown into waterways dump trucks.
low-tech inventions be- nearly everywhere. Storm Eight traps on India’s Co-
ing deployed to capture drains funnel in litter tossed oum River at Chennai,
plastic trash in rivers and onto streets. In places with- costing about $120,000 to-
streams before it can pol- out refuse collection, peo- tal, corralled about 2,400
lute the world’s oceans. ple use convenient waters tons (2,200 metric tons) of
The devices are fledgling to carry trash away. plastics and 21,800 tons
attempts to dent an esti- The science of plastic pol- (19,800 metric tons) of oth-
mated 8.8 million tons (8 lution is new and almost as er trash and floating plants
metric tons) of plastic that much in flux as the waters in 2018, their first year in po-
gets into the ocean every it studies. For instance, a sition, said Sekhar.
year. scientist who reported in The system with the big-
Once there, it maims or kills 2017 that rivers might carry gest fan base may be the
marine plants and animals anywhere from 450,000 to anthropomorphized Trash
including whales,dolphins, 4.4 million tons (410,000 to 4 Wheels at the mouths of
and seabirds and accumu- million metric tons) of plas- four Baltimore watersheds.
lates in the Great Pacific tic a year into the sea also “We’ve got 100,000 fol-
Garbage Patch and other was part of a 2021 study lowers across major social
vast swirls of currents. that narrowed the range media platforms,” said
Trash-gobbling traps on riv- considerably, with an up- Adam Lindquist, vice presi-
ers and other waterways per limit of nearly 3 mil- dent of programs and en-
won’t eliminate ocean lion tons (2.7 million metric vironmental initiatives for
plastic but can help re- tons). the Waterfront Partnership
duce it, say officials with “Compared to other pol- of Baltimore, which owns
the National Oceanic and lutants ... available data three devices.
Atmospheric Administra- on plastics is still scarce,” “They are a really great
tion’s Marine Debris Pro- Christian Schmidt, of the model for how to get the
gram. Helmholtz Centre for En- public involved and atten-
“It’s just hard to get out to vironmental Research in tive to the issue,” MaryLee
Haughwout, then acting
director of NOAA’s Ma-
rine Debris Program, said in
April.
The program has helped
pay for trash traps in the
Anacostia River outside
Washington, D.C., and the
Tijuana River estuary in Cal-
ifornia and Mexico but is
not involved with the Trash
Wheels.q