To prevent plastic waste from polluting the ocean, a variety of water-based plastic waste removal equipment is being developed. For example, the "Great Bubble Barrier," a river waste removal system developed by a Dutch company, uses a wall of bubbles perpendicular to the river flow to push plastic waste toward a collector while allowing fish and other wildlife to pass through safely.
Start by intercepting river garbage to prevent its spread and ocean pollution
The Large Bubble Barrier, developed under the EU's Maelstrom (Sustainable Removal and Management of Marine Litter) programme, is currently in operation in Amsterdam and is also being tested in the Douro River in Porto, Portugal.
The project team is developing a series of technologies to intercept garbage in rivers and prevent it from flowing into the ocean.
Natural disasters like tsunamis contribute to plastic waste entering the ocean, but these disasters don't occur every day. Rivers are the more regular source of plastic waste entering the ocean. A 2017 study found that 90% of global marine plastic waste originates from just 10 river systems: the Nile and Niger Rivers in Africa, and eight rivers in Asia: the Ganges, Indus, Yellow River, Yangtze River, Haihe River, Pearl River, Mekong River, and Heilongjiang River.
“Some communities don’t have adequate trash collection services, so they just dump their trash into the river and let it float away,” said Molly Morse, a scientist at the Benioff Ocean Initiative at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and director of the university’s Global Clean Ocean Streams Alliance. “Plastic waste from land can also be carried by rain or wind into rivers… and then into the ocean.”
An estimated 800,000 to 2.7 million tons of plastic enter the ocean each year through rivers—the equivalent of 66,000 to 225,000 double-decker buses. Once at sea, waste becomes even more difficult to process. Plastic often drifts far, picking up invasive species and forming larger plastic waste pockets, such as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
Therefore, some scientists have called for preventing plastic from flowing into rivers at its source. A 2020 study found that only by preventing plastic from flowing into the sea, or by combining river barriers and other cleaning equipment, can the amount of plastic in the ocean be significantly reduced.
Source: Environmental Information Center (https://e-info.org.tw/node/233215)
