{"id":473702,"date":"2026-06-12T12:33:07","date_gmt":"2026-06-12T12:33:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/473702\/"},"modified":"2026-06-12T12:33:07","modified_gmt":"2026-06-12T12:33:07","slug":"a-solar-powered-rubbish-eating-boat-the-vessel-chomping-plastic-waste-out-of-the-sea-waste","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/473702\/","title":{"rendered":"A solar-powered rubbish-eating boat? The vessel chomping plastic waste out of the sea | Waste"},"content":{"rendered":"

On an overcast June morning, I step from the rubber-sided Zodiac boat on to a floating barge at the mouth of Ballona Creek, where it meets Santa Monica Bay on the west side of Los Angeles<\/a>. The first thing I notice? Salty air is the only smell, despite six giant waste bins sitting atop the tennis court-sized barge.<\/p>\n

The contraption is actually two barges \u2013 a smaller platform sits nestled inside the larger boat. A floating barrier directs rubbish into the device, where a conveyor belt scoops it up. An automated shuttle then distributes the waste into six dumpsters on a separate barge, sending an alert to crews when it is full. Above, solar panels form the ceiling and a conveyor belt runs slowly, dropping bits of plastic and waste into each of the bins. The whole thing can hold about 20,000lbs (9,070kg) of rubbish \u2013 the same as one fully loaded lorry.<\/p>\n

Ocean Cleanup aims to clean up the 30 most-polluted cities by 2030. Photograph: Ocean Cleanup<\/p>\n

Since it is the dry season in LA there is not much waste being washed down the river by rainfall. But I still see what the problems are: polystyrene takeaway containers, noodle cups, bottle caps, a yellow pencil, a palm frond dotted with colourful pieces of microplastics. They are all caught up in the boat\u2019s conveyor belt. It\u2019s a pretty representative sample, says James Patterson, the operations manager with the nonprofit Ocean Cleanup<\/a>, which created the system. \u201cYou get a wide variety of basic plastics \u2013 a lot of bottles, cups, to-go containers, things from restaurants. That\u2019s typically what we see out here,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

When the waste is pulled out, it is sorted and sent to refuse facilities. \u201cWe want to make sure that from start to finish, we\u2019re pulling the trash out in a responsible way, and it\u2019s getting sorted or stored in a responsible manner,\u201d Patterson says. \u201cWe don\u2019t want a circular battery of trash here.\u201d<\/p>\n

This particular barge is a model for others being deployed around the world. Ocean Cleanup operates in 10 places, with 21 Interceptor systems \u2013 in countries including Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Guatemala, Jamaica and the Dominican Republic. It aims to clean up the 30 most-polluted cities by 2030.<\/p>\n

The big idea? Stop waste from ever reaching the ocean. \u201cInstead of specific rivers, the goal is to clean up an entire area, because that\u2019s how you get an actual genuine impact on society and on the environment,\u201d Patterson says.<\/p>\n

In this creek, the end of a 130 sq mile urban drainage network in LA County, the boat stopped 143,710lbs of rubbish from entering the ocean in 2025. Ocean Cleanup will launch two more boats in the LA area \u2013 in the San Gabriel River and the Los Angeles River. It is already having an impact on the coastal communities, Patterson says. Beach cities south of the project have lowered their budgets for beach grooming: there is simply less waste on the sand, so they don\u2019t need to be cleaned as often.<\/p>\n

Boyan Slat, Ocean Cleanup\u2019s founder, on a beach in Honduras. Photograph: Ocean Cleanup<\/p>\n

Ocean Cleanup\u2019s founder, the Dutch inventor and entrepreneur Boyan Slat, was originally inspired to use technology to battle the Giant Pacific Garbage Patch<\/a>, and created the skimming technologies that can scoop a soupy crud of waste off the surface of water. But in researching solutions, the nonprofit pivoted to rivers \u2013 the arteries that carry rubbish into the world\u2019s oceans.<\/p>\n

Rivers are key. Research by Ocean Cleanup has shown that just 1,000 of the world\u2019s rivers are responsible for nearly 80% of plastic emissions into the ocean, and 90% of all pollution in the ocean comes from rivers. \u201cWe have to turn the faucet off before we can scoop the ocean, or else all we\u2019re doing is taking out legacy trash to replace it with new trash,\u201d Patterson says. \u201cBefore you can clean out the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, you really need to turn off the source.\u201d<\/p>\n

Work on designing the autonomous boat started in 2017, and this pilot project in LA began in 2022. It cost about $1.3m to design and permit, and another $1.5m to secure the boat and booms in place. Maintenance each year costs $650,000 \u2013 and the Interceptor is being provided to LA County free from Ocean Cleanup.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not a perfect system. As we stand on the barge, I point to a red plastic cup floating outside the barrier on the surface. Patterson winces. \u201cWhen something like that escapes, it hurts,\u201d he says. But that cup is an outlier. The most difficult kind of trash, the public works employees agree, is large logs.<\/p>\n

Ocean Cleanup\u2019s boat processing captured waste in Ballona Creek to the west of LA. Photograph: Ocean Cleanup<\/p>\n

Each river requires its own special system. \u201cThere\u2019s no one size fits all,\u201d Patterson says. \u201cEvery river is different in how they act, where you can deploy, what the local government and permitting timelines look like, and just the conditions of nature.\u201d<\/p>\n

Patterson adds the boats rarely have issues with wildlife \u2013 except for birds. Seagulls like to sit and defecate on the barge, which can corrode the metal.<\/p>\n

As we step off the Interceptor back to the Zodiac that will return us to shore, I look back at the metal container and comment how straightforward it all seems: gather the floating debris, hold it for later disposal. From the outside it looks complicated. \u201cIt may seem simple,\u201d Patterson says, \u201cbut, truly, a master of engineering goes on inside of these.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On an overcast June morning, I step from the rubber-sided Zodiac boat on to a floating barge at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":473703,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[273,111,139,69,147],"class_list":["post-473702","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-environment","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473702","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=473702"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473702\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/473703"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=473702"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=473702"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=473702"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}