Australian Surfers Develop ‘Seabin’ Device to Remove Plastic Trash from the Ocean

Marine environment is being destroyed by the ridiculously huge amounts of plastic trash in Earth’s oceans. In fact, it is estimated that the oceans are filled with 5.25 trillion pieces of plastic with a total weight of 269,000 tons, which harm 1,000,000 ocean animals each year. These numbers are quite shocking, don’t you think.

In the recent years, we have seen a number of amazing inventions aimed to stop this pollution and save the oceans,such as the massive ocean cleaning system called The Ocean Cleanup, which is to be launched in 2016, or the floating Seawer Skyscraper, an innovative power station which not only cleans up plastic waste but also generates clean energy.

However, there are also some less known inventions, which may not be as large-scale and ambitious as the projects mentioned above, but they certainly serve the same purpose. An unusual solution to the problem of ocean plastic pollution was recently proposed by two Australian surfers who were disappointed with the conditions of the world’s oceans and decided to do something about it. As a result, Andrew Turton and Pete Ceglinski came up with an idea of a low-cost ocean cleaning device.

Seabin is an ocean-friendly bucket that can be used to clean and filter the water in ports and marinas. Here is how the system works: the device is fixed to a dock or wall and a shore-based water pump on the dock creates a constant flow of water into the bucket, thus bringing all the floating debris with it. This trash is then trapped inside a catch bag made from natural fiber. After this, the water can also be pumped through an oil-water separator in case it is contaminated with oil or chemicals. The final stage is to pump the cleaned water back into the ocean.

According to Turton and Ceglinski, controlled environments like marinas and ports are the perfect place for using Seabin. While ocean swells and storms tend to stay away from the marinas, wind and currents bring debris into the areas all the time.

“By working with these 
marinas, ports and yacht clubs we can locate the Seabin in the perfect place and mother nature brings us the rubbish to catch it,” Turton and Ceglinski say.

After having developed a prototype, they launched an Indiegogo campaign to fund a commercial production of Seabin systems. Turton and Ceglinski have already reached their goal of $230,000 and plan to sell Seabins at $3,825 per unit, starting from November 2016.

Seabin may be intended to clean local waters, but if every port and marina were equipped with such a device, it could, in fact, have effects on the global situation and help reduce ocean plastic pollution all over the world.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3tjOEtoArg