Writer: Iris Sit

Have you ever seen a river that is crystal clear? Where is the river located? Probably somewhere that is far away from civilization and any disturbance. In recent decades, river has become the plastic highway into the oceans, with the ever-increasing amount of the plastic waste dumped in the river every day, river plastic pollution has become one of the most pressing environmental issues around the world. It is estimated that 80% of the global annual plastic waste are dumped into more than 1000 major rivers, with the range between 0.8 – 2.7 million metric tons per year. The most polluting ones being the small rivers located in the urban area.

However, an 18-year-old Dutch inventor Boyan Slat has found the way out. With his passion in mind, he founded The Ocean Cleanup in 2013, which is an NGO dedicated to cleaning up the oceans and intercepting the plastic waste on its way to the ocean via rivers.

In October 2019, The Ocean Cleanup launched the “Interceptors”, which are medium-sized vessel that used to scoop up the plastic waste from river. It is 100% solar-powered, with solar panels and lithium-ion solar batteries installed on the vessel, the stored energy can generate enough power to operate 24/7. Moreover, with solar power, no river contamination will be caused during the operation.

The vessel is anchored to the riverbed and floating barriers are used to channel plastic to itself. A conveyor belt then separates the garbage from the water and dumped into containers on a separate barge. The Interceptors can extract up to 100,000 kg of plastic every day, which the plastic collected will then be recycled or used to generate electricity.

Four Interceptors have already been built, two of them are currently operating in Indonesia and Malaysia, and the other two are planned to be operated in Vietnam and the Dominican Republic in the near future. With the collective efforts from all over the world, it is planned that the Interceptor would be able to cover the world 1000 most polluting rivers in the next five years.

With this environmental-friendly invention, who is not looking forward to seeing the true beauty of rivers around the world being unveiled?

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