By Paul
Ridden
February 03, 2021
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A locally
designed, inexpensive trash trap has been installed along Vietnam's Song Hong
River to remove floating debris such as plastic waste (Photo credit: Ocean
Conservancy)
VIEW 2 IMAGES
They may not look quite as swanky
as the Interceptors from
the Ocean Cleanup, but the idea is similar. The first in a series of trash traps
installed along Vietnam's Song Hong, the country's second-longest river, is
designed to remove floating debris from the water as it flows towards the Gulf
of Tonkin.
"The latest science confirms that
we need a suite of solutions to fight ocean plastic pollution, from reducing our
reliance on virgin plastics to improving waste collection and recycling to
cleaning up the plastic waste that does end up in the environment," said the
Ocean Conservancy's Chever Voltmer. "Rivers often serve as a pathway for
plastics to travel out to sea, so trash trappers like these are important
cleanup tools. What makes this particular model so unique and promising is that
it is inexpensive, locally designed, and made from locally sourced materials."
Local operatives will remove the
trapped trash every three days for processing Ocean Conservancy
The trash traps are the work of
Vietnam's Centre for Marinelife Conservation and Community Development (MCD),
which has been testing them in the Song Hong for about a year – collecting more
than 18 tons of floating waste in the process. Now thanks to funding through the
Benioff Ocean Initiative's Clean Currents Coalition, more installations along
the river and its tributaries in Nam Dinh province are being rolled out over the
next two years.
Where the Ocean Project's Interceptor is
a barge-like vessel designed to remove plastic as it patrols rivers, the trash
trap features floating booms and platforms connected to the riverbank.
During the grant period, a local
team will remove and sort trapped debris every three days. Plastic waste such as
bottles will be sold to recycling facilities while lower-grade plastic from the
likes of bags and films will be processed at a special facility in Nam Dinh.
Data on the operation will be analyzed by members of the Ocean Conservancy and
Vietnamese scientists to inform future waste strategies.
It doesn't appear that the
solution is designed to deal with microplastics, but with MCD looking to build a
network of traps in the Song Hong delta, it could help stem the tide of plastic
waste entering the seas and oceans from Vietnam's rivers.
Source: Ocean
Conservancy