Every minute, the equivalent of one truck of plastic trash is dumped into the sea.
That’s 1440 trucks every 24 hours or 8 billion kilos per year.
Engineers in Australia and Amsterdam are working to tackle this problem by creating an innovative bubble screen barrier that can capture the plastic, while allowing fish and ships to pass unimpeded.
The bubble barrier is essentially a long, perforated tube which runs diagonally across the river bed and has compressed air pumped through.
As the bubbles from the tube rise upwards, the natural water current helps to push the waste to one side. The first operational bubble barrier has already been built in Amsterdam's canal networks at the end of 2019.
Shini Somara explores whether this could be the next big weapon deployed against the growing problem of plastic pollution in our seas and oceans?
Links :
- Earthshot price : The Great Bubble Barrier
- DutchNews : Amsterdam’s bubble barrier to collect
- CNN : A ‘Bubble Barrier’ is trapping plastic waste before it can get into the sea
- UNESCO : The Great Bubble Barrier
- The Guardian : ‘Incredibly promising’: the bubble barrier extracting plastic from a Dutch river
- WeForum : Amsterdam has a bubble barrier to catch canal plastic
- EuroNews : The Great Bubble Barrier: How bubbles are keeping plastic out of the sea
- PositiveNews : The ‘bubble barriers’ that stop plastic pollution before it reaches the sea
- FastCompany : A simple burst of bubbles is keeping this canal clear of plastic
- NewAtlas : How simple air bubbles could help tackle ocean plastic waste
- EcoWatch : World’s First River ‘Bubble Barrier’ Shows Promise for Preventing Plastic From Reaching the Sea
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