Most ocean plastic starts off in rivers. From bubble curtains to googly-eyed trash wheels, here are four technologies designed to intercept river plastic before it gets to the sea.
Last month The Ocean Cleanup turned its attention to river plastic and launched the Interceptor, a floating device it claims can harvest up to 100,000 kilograms of plastic waste per day.
"To truly rid the oceans of plastic, we need to both clean up the legacy and close the tap, preventing more plastic from reaching the oceans in the first place," said Boyan Slat, founder of the organisation that has until now focused on trying to remove plastic already in the oceans.
However many experts believe that extracting plastic from the ocean is the wrong approach. "To be very honest, I don't believe that we're going to clean up the oceans," said Cyrill Gutsch, founder of Parley for the Oceans, in an interview with Dezeen earlier this year. Of the 300 million tonnes of plastic produced every year, up to eight million tonnes ends up in the ocean.
A 2017 report published in the Environmental Science and Technology journal revealed that 88 to 95 per cent of the plastic waste transported to the ocean via rivers comes from just ten rivers. These include the Nile, the Yellow River and the Ganges.
An estimated 4.8 to 12.7 million tonnes of plastic end up in the oceans each year. Circular-economy charity the Ellen MacArthur Foundation estimates that by 2050 there will be more plastic than fis...