The oceans are getting more and more polluted day by day, all thanks to the lethargic practices and misguided projects that we humans have established. Although the major percentage of oceans and seas are not getting polluted directly, they are being caused by the polluted water that enters the seas or oceans through rivers. Rivers that are meant to be nutrient-rich water now contain a huge lot of plastics, microbes, and harmful chemicals from nearby factories and industries. These reaching the ocean directly harming aquatic life as well as the marine ecosystem are some of the impacts of water pollution.
As you know plastic, one of the major causes of water pollution has brought in devastating effects on marine lives. You might have heard the news about finding plastic bags, fishing nets, and many more plastic materials from the bellies of whales, sharks, and other aquatic mammals. Although we are excavating a major position of the aquatic life for food by larger amounts of fish-catching operations, the impact of plastic as a pollutant to the oceans has added to the difficulties in the survival of these aquatic animals. It's estimated that over 8 million tons of plastic end up in the ocean every year. Just imagine the effect of these pollutants on the marine ecosystem. Furthermore, it's estimated that if going by this pace the weight of the plastic in the ocean will outweigh the total weight of the fish in the entire oceans across the world by 2050 which will lead to the end of the world scenario.
How does this plastic reach the ocean? Nobody is gonna take truckloads of plastic waste and dump them in the center of the ocean. Beaches are one of the primary contributors to plastic being ending up in the ocean. The beaches are filled with plastic which is littered all over by visitors and beach goers. These will be consumed by the water reaching the shores and will be consumed by the ocean. Another aspect is the plastic in rivers which will end up in the ocean as the rivers are flowing through it passing through areas of human civilization that will dump their plastic waste into these rivers.
Today we need innovative and advanced solutions to rectify this issue. Along with these solutions, complete and full-fledged awareness of the impact of water pollution caused by plastic in water bodies should be mandatory. This is where the innovative solution by The Ocean Clean up, a non-profit organization focusing on comes into the picture. The company focuses on containing and removing the plastics before it ends up in the ocean. They have developed a new advanced machine or a boat which will be helpful to the environment by removing the plastics in rivers before reaching the ocean.
The Interceptor by the Ocean Clean Up can be coined as a floating device that uses conveyor belts to collect a large amount of debris of waste and trash in the river bodies by just floating on top of the water. The interceptor is one of the world's first and foremost large-scaled debris removal systems which are built for rivers focusing on removing the garbage, mainly plastic waste from reaching the ocean. Therefore, it can be implemented in any of the largely polluted rivers which are the major contributors of the water pollution for oceans. Just imagine its positive impact on removing the plastic waste from the Ganges, Thames or the Yamuna river, or any other mostly polluted rivers of the world. We will be able to reduce the pollution levels to a bare minimum on the rivers and thus end the wastes ending up in the oceans.
What is the Interceptor?
As the name itself is a blocking device which floats on top of water bodies especially rivers helping you to remove the trash from it. It's a fully automated and advanced waste removal system that is powered by solar energy. The operation through solar energy and automated systems makes it to be operated without any time-bound restrictions both day and night. Moreover, the functioning entirely relies on the natural forces that are river currents for the waste collection as well as solar energy for the operations.
Source: theoceancleanup.com
The interceptor contains a conveyor belt that will collect all the trash which is floating and will be dumped into a dumpster which will be emptied based on the need by a small crew stationed at the banks. The new version has the advancement of a 2.5-meter wide conveyor belt than the one meter wide of the previous version. At this stage, we have a total of three that are fully operational and are about to be even more increased in the near future. Currently, we have three interceptors in Cengkareng Drain in Jakarta, Indonesia, The Klang River in Klang, Selangor, Malaysia, and the Rio Ozama, Santo Domingo, in the Dominican Republic.
The Ocean Clean Up project also recycles the plastics that are collected and now puts the operations to a full circle where a major portion of the plastic waste collected is recycled. Quite recently they The Ocean Clean Up has introduced premium sunglasses which are entirely made from the collected plastic waste.
Such innovative structures and designs will add up to the pollution control on oceans helping the marine ecosystem to survive and strive towards further excellence.
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