Hey Seabin, you’re on garbage duty! Image: Seabin
Unless you’re blind, deaf, and dumb, you are aware that there’s a very large problem with plastics in our oceans. Every year, humanity vomits vast amounts of trash into the sea that will not go anywhere for a thousand years or so. For the most part, it breaks up into thousands of tiny pieces called microplastics that end up… well, basically everywhere. Fish eat them. Birds eat them. Whales eat them. And, of course, since we eat fish and we drink water, we eat them. Which, of course, is not very good for us. There are plenty of people who are trying to do something about it (most notably Boyan Slat), and there’s a new one out of Australia. Called the Seabin Project, they’ve got an idea that will make a small dent in a giant issue—which is better than no dent at all.
In short, it’s a floating garbage can. Submerged in the water at ports, floating docks, marinas, and other high-traffic locations, the Seabin uses a small electric water pump that moves a basket up above the surface of the water, then back down below. “We pump it out the bottom. And then we filter the debris and the trash and the oil with the filter in the middle of that,” Seabin Project CEO Pete Ceglinski explained to CNET. “With the current filter we’re using, we’re catching microplastics to 2mm in size. And we have developed the filter using a finer mesh where we’ve been catching microfibers. So stuff that you cannot see with the naked eye.”
Apparently, there’s also pad at the bottom of the Seabin that soaks up oil, of which there is plenty in places like marinas. According to Ceglinski, the average Seabin takes in just over three pounds of trash every day, which works out to about a thousand pounds a year. Like I said, a small dent is better than no dent.
“We found that the number one item the Seabins are catching is cigarette butts,” Ceglinksi continued. “The number two is plastic particles, and the third one is food wrappers. Plus the oil as well which is always present in a marina.”
Right now, there aren’t too many Seabins around—just over a dozen in eight countries, but the company is quickly getting some recognition. They expect that this year alone, they’ll have orders for 1,500 more. They aren’t cheap, though. Running at just over $4,000, the Seabin might not be a catch-on for cash-strapped businesses. Trash collection is a part of day-to-day operations at many of those, however, and as Ceglingski points out, this one works all day and all night. “So it’s an employee 24 hours a day for us and then we just come by periodically,” said Michelle Shadow, the general manager for Ballena Isle Marina, to CNET. “And it also collects a lot of the smaller stuff that we miss.”
See more from the Seabin Project on their website.
