Most Ocean Plastic Flows From Rivers. Can Giant Trash Barriers Stop It?

In 2012 a teenager came up with an

ambitious plan to eliminate plastic in

the ocean.

Boy wanted to harness natural

currents to collect floating debris

inside a giant U-shaped barrier.

I believe the Great Pacific Garbage Patch can

completely clean itself in just five years. That timeline didn't

work out and there's still a garbage

trucks worth of plastic entering the

ocean every minute on average

but the ocean cleanup has made progress.

The nonprofit has removed more than 200

metric tons of trash from the Pacific.

Many people said that it couldn't be

done that it was Fool's era and a pipe

dream, but to make a dent in the plastic

pollution the organization's going

closer to the source.

Most ocean plastic comes from Rivers

so the Dutch entrepreneur invented these

big machines that capture waste before

it ever makes it to Open Waters.

Rivers are the arteries that carry

the trash from land to Sea.

They're called interceptors and the

founder plans to deploy a thousand of

them, but some experts worry these machines

could strip rivers and oceans of things

that are supposed to be there too.

So can a network of trash barriers claim

the world's most polluted Rivers

and our cleaner Rivers are the key to a

plastic-free ocean?

The Rio Osama in the Dominican Republic

flows into the Caribbean Sea.

It's one of the dirtiest rivers in the

world and Carmen Encarnacion has lived nearby

for 24 years.

The ocean cleanup installed an

Interceptor about a mile down the river

from her home in 2020.

contamination

The idea is to let the current do the most

of the work as trash travels Downstream. This 700

foot long arm redirects it toward the

machine's opening so at the barriers

they let the water pass but they stop

everything that's floating on the roof. We have the solar panels

that are connected to batteries which

store the energy so that even at night

we can keep intercepting lessons

conveyor belts carry the waste to one of

six dumpsters.

They can fill up in just three days

during the rainy season.

A lot of today's Haul is plants

and in this case, that's probably not a

bad thing. These are invasive water

hyacinths, they grow naturally in the

Amazon but over the past Century humans

have introduced them to new places where

they don't have any predators like the Osama River where they're

taking over blocking light and oxygen and killing

plants and animals beneath them.

The plant tends to thrive in polluted

water and its roots cling to trash.

Nearby factories and Farms have used

this River as a Dumping Ground for

decades but in Santo Domingo many people who

live in Osama's banks depend on it

for drinking water.

A lot of them also have limited options

for dealing with waste. It has to do with

urban planning and if it's communities

here don't have the access roads for

the trucks to come in so some locals

dump their trash and drainage ditches

called Canadas.

So right behind me, we have the Canada

bonavides, it's one of the worst Canadas

we have here in the Osama River just

like the rivers are the arteries that

take the plastic to the ocean these

Canadas here are the arteries that take

the plastic to the river.

The ocean cleanup estimates that Osama

carries up to 22 000 metric tons of

plastic into the Caribbean Sea each year.

The nonprofit has 10 other interceptors

in rivers around the globe. The devices

can't remove all types of pollution like

chemicals or plastic that doesn't float

and until residents have more options

for dealing with trash it'll keep ending

up in the Osama, we rely heavily on.

Working with local Partners such as the

Dominican Navy here precisely to work on this Upstream

problem.

The Navy handles day-to-day operations

for the river cleaner and it works with the national

government to manually collect trash

that slips by the interceptor.

They have proven to be the perfect

partners for us by the end of the year.

They should be owning the Interceptor

once that happens the ocean cleanup will

shift its focus to other rivers like the real motabua in Guatemala which

the nonprofit says might have more

plastic than any other in the world.

In Guatemala, there's so much trash

coming down the river, these

machines would be filled within a few

seconds so there again we have a

different type of Interceptor.

The nonprofit built an Interceptor fence to

catch plastic in a flash flood zone that

flows into the river.

Every river is unique you need to

adapt it to the specific circumstances

of that River. The fence let some

Plastics through but Boyne expects to

have an updated Interceptor by the end

of 2023.

Meanwhile, the founder hasn't given up on

his initial dream.

He founded the Ocean Cleanup in 2013 and

a decade later the patch is still

growing.

One Challenge is that it isn't a

patch,

it's two swirling clouds of

debris which often isn't visible on the

surface.

Natural currents have created Five

whirlpools like it around the world Paul

gyre and each one collects trash.

The non-profit is working on cleaning up

the North Pacific gyre using this thing.

It's a flexible barrier stretched

between two ships with a shallow screen

hanging off.

The idea is to consolidate floated

plastic making it easier to collect

about once a week.

The ocean cleanup says in total it's

removed more than 200 metric tons of

plastic from the Pacific gyre yet it's

only about two-tenths of a percent of

all the plastic that might be floating

here.

The team is working on a system of three

times bigger than this one which should

be ready sometime in 2023.

Some researchers worry these cleaning

machines can disrupt ecosystems by

scooping up living things along with

trash.

The ocean cleanup says the screen

creates a downward flow that carries

living creatures under it but the system still catches some fish,

crabs, Barnacles, and other animals.

The nonprofit says it's continually

fine-tuning the device to try to keep

creatures out but it's impossible to

avoid them completely that's partially

because sea life is all mixed up with

the plastic and can even live right on

it.

Sea urchins, sea stars pretty much

anything that you can imagine you can

also find on these plastic floats.

There are a lot of organisms that also

attach their eggs to these floating

plastics.

Some critics say the whole idea

of passively harvesting plastic is risky

once it is in the ocean it is connected

with marine life, it's too late to remove

it.

A potential alternative is targeting

clusters of the trash instead of sweeping

the whole gyre of plastic in the open ocean

tends to form these plastic dust bunnies.

At Sea collecting plastic debris is

also pretty easy once it's plumped into

these dust bunnies because then you have

a single targeted area with an extremely

a high amount of plastic.

Those clumps are mostly fishing gear

which does the most damage

by focusing on things like ghost gear

which are dangerous to

marine life. You're collecting the most

harmful plastic out of the ocean not

necessarily collecting some of the less

harmful plastic things like laundry

baskets or buckets which may have a lot

of life growing on them.

The ocean cleanup says that in the long

run its ocean systems will be more

scalable than manual cleaning.

When it comes to its River cleanup

experts were more optimistic.

I loved the diagrams and how they sort

of funnels. I was like that is perfect once it's in the ocean it's a

the problem that becomes much

harder to manage that tracks with buoyance.

Results as of April 2023

His team has collected more

than 10 times as much plastic from

Rivers from the ocean

in Santo Domingo members of the

Dominican Navy emptied the dumpsters and

send the hall to the Ducasa landfill of

course landfill is not ideal but at

At least it's a million times better than

it flowing into the ocean.

Boeing says the river Plastics can't be

recycled as easily as the ones from the

Ocean it's much more of a mix and also

it's much more polluted so you have

sewage water that's often in these Rivers.

Ultimately restoring a polluted

ecosystem requires big changes.

The best way to keep plastic out of

rivers and oceans is to make less of it

everybody can do something but we also

need the companies to do their part. This

needs to be a collaboration between all

sectors of society.

In the meantime, Carmen does what she can

to clean up her neighborhood

in her free time, she collects water

hyacinths and transforms them into art.

She dries the plane and weaves it into

hats bags and more decorations.

Much like a plastic plant can be

useful but Carmen still wants to see it

gone.