Do you remember the Ocean Cleanup? It’s not the only project to save the sea! Two friends have designed and made the Seabin Project, an automated rubbish bin that catches floating rubbish, oil, fuel and detergents. It designed for floating docks in the water of marinas, private pontoons, inland waterways, residential lakes, harbours, water ways, ports and yacht clubs.
The Seabin Project, an idea we love
Unfortunately, every year several tons of plastic ends up in the ocean creating “sea of plastic,” which is an aggregation of dirts floating in sea water stretching many miles. But the Australian-based Seabin Project is effectively trying to stop the plastic bags, styrofoam water bottles, and other garbage floating on the water before they end up in the ocean, which is the largest water body. They make use of a floating garbage can that is submerged in the water at yacht clubs, floating docks, marinas and ports.
In windless conditions, the Seabin can brings in garbage from close to 5 to 15 feet away (roughly 2 to 6 meters), but it does not catch garbage that isn’t floating in its way. So there is need for them to be placed at strategic places in harbors and marinas to maximize garbage collection.
Also, it can’t take in big pieces of garbage like a large piece of cardboard floating on the water, it has to be picked out by hand. It was discovered that the common item the Seabins are catching are the cigarette butts, the other item is plastic particles, and the third one is food wrappers, and sometimes oil, though the chemical substances in the sea can’t be evacuated by the Seabin.
The Seabin Project is going a long way to bring the ecosystem back to it’s normal state and it is the best solution yet discovered.
How does Seabin Project work?
The Seabin is situated at the waters surface and is plumbed into a shore based water pump on the dock. The water gets sucked into the Seabin bringing all floating debris and floating liquids into the Seabin. We catch all the floating debris inside the Seabin and the water then flows out through the bottom of the bin and up into the pump on the dock.
The water then flows through the pump where we have the option of installing an oil/water separator and clean water then flows back into the ocean. This process is constant, operating 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.
Inside the Seabin we have a natural fiber “catch bag” which collects all the floating debris. When this is full or near to full, the marina worker simply changes the catch bag with another one. The collected debris is then disposed of responsibly, the catch bag cleaned and now it is ready to swap again for the full one in the still operating Seabin.
We have designed the size of the Seabin and catch bag for safe working load for one person to safely change the catch bag.
If the system is full it still works. The flow of the water simply pulls all the surrounding floating debris against the Seabin and keeps it there. The marina worker would simply scoop up the surrounding debris and then change the catch bag as normal.