The Seabin looks deceptively like an ordinary rubbish bin on first glance, but is designed to float in lakes, harbors and marinas, sifting the waters and capturing debris and polluting liquids in a bag.

The design is made to work all day every day and throughout the year, hovering at the surface of the water and plugged into a shore-side water pump.

The system sucks water and waste into the bin then lets it back out the bottom. Oil separators can be added to the natural fiber bag to sift for both solids and liquids. A single operator can periodically empty the bag.

The bins are highly portable and relatively inexpensive, making them a great solution for local water purification. Right now they remain prototypes, but have been funded for further development.

From its makers: “We have designed and made 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. Can even be fitted to super yachts and motor yachts!”

The post Floating Seabin: Oceanic Garbage Can Sucks Down Waste first appeared on Gajitz.

A startup is turning New York City waste receptacles into sources of free street-level, solar-powered internet in addition to their current capabilities, which include signalling for a pickup when the garbage is filling up or starting to smell.

The city already has over 100 smart bins from Bigbelly waste management that are each able to relay information about their status wirelessly, so adding this functionality is a natural next step, particularly in dense areas where signals have limited range (as they can’t pass through tall buildings).

The connected system has all kinds of potential growth paths, including public alerts and data collection for the city government. If a waste space seems like a strange place to find such things, consider the necessary ubiquity of such systems – it is really only natural to turn something on every street corner more functional.

Another initiative to turn pay phones into Wi-Fi hubs is also underway. Meanwhile, Bigbelly is glad to be pushing in new directions: “We are a smart solar-powered, connected technology platform that is literally sitting in the streets of New York. We are exactly where the people are.”

The post Smart Garbage: NYC Trash Bins Now Free Wi-Fi Hotspots first appeared on Gajitz.

Designed to target key points in global oceanic trash circulation, addressing a 7-million-ton problem planet-wide, this system has rapidly evolved from conceptual and inspiring idea in the mind of a teenager to feasibility-studied, fully-funded project set to go live next year.

Boyan Slat‘s approach is going to be set up near the coasts of Japan and South Korea, tackling one of the most major passageways for garbage currently known, using “an anchored network of floating booms and processing platforms that could be dispatched to garbage patches around the world. Instead of moving through the ocean, the array would span the radius of a garbage patch, acting as a giant funnel. The angle of the booms would force plastic in the direction of the platforms, where it would be separated from plankton, filtered and stored for recycling.”

The initial array will span 2000 feet and be the longest floating structure built to date. One of the project primary targets will be the giant gyre known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch – Slat’s organization, The Ocean Cleanup, believes this giant repository of waste could be cut in half within ten years. Some of the gathered trash will be recycled and other portions turned into biofuels.

Unlike other designs with similar but perhaps too bold of ambitions, this takes a surgeon’s scalpel to the problem, aiming to solve the largest areas first and with the least time and energy necessary. From from the project website: “The Ocean Cleanup develops technologies to extract, prevent, and intercept plastic pollution. The Ocean Cleanup’s goal is to fuel the world’s fight against oceanic plastic pollution, by initiating the largest cleanup in history. Instead of going after the plastic – which would take many thousands of years and billions of dollars to complete – The Ocean Cleanup uses long floating barriers to let the ocean currents concentrate the plastic itself. After having worked with a team of 100 volunteering scientists and engineers, a 2014 study confirmed the passive system is indeed likely a feasible and cost-effective method to remove half the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in 10 years’ time.”

The post Earth’s First Ocean Cleanup Array Set to Deploy in 2016 first appeared on Gajitz.

The Ocean Cleanup Project takes aim at the most dire accumulations of trash in the world’s waters: the huge floating ‘garbage islands’ where millions of pieces (and pounds) of non-biodegradable waste gather and swirl.

Unlike more expensive options, like actively dragging nets from ships, this low-cost solution would place floating structures and associated net systems at key places where garbage collects, and focus on the top few feet of water where most of it is found (and avoiding the entanglement of deeper sea life).

Developed by 20-year-old engineering student Boyan Slat, this solution is refreshingly pragmatic – rather than aim for the impossible (full cleanup would cost billions of dollars and take thousands of years), he has set his sights on making the most impact possible with a reasonable budget.

“The Ocean Cleanup estimates the cost of removing one kilogram of plastic at €4.53. This is 33 times cheaper than conventional ocean cleanup methods, while also being an estimated 7,900 times faster.”

Plastic finding its way into the realm of these arrays, each spanning tens of miles, would be pulled and sorted using the ocean’s own natural movements, then collected and removed in bulk by larger ships.

The post New System Sucks Plastic Out of Oceans 33 Times Cheaper first appeared on Gajitz.

Trash collection from public bins can be a problem if the cans on the garbage truck routes have nothing in them. Time, manpower and energy are all wasted. But how do you efficiently collect the waste if you don’t know which cans to collect from? Using the Enevo One would be a good start.

Invented and actually used in Finland, the Enevo One smart garbage can sensor knows when a bin needs emptied. It’s a small disc-shaped sensor that adheres to the bottom of the municipal trash cans and can sense when the bins are full. The collection company is then alerted and the appropriate adjustments are made to the truck routes.

The Enevo One’s “smart” qualities are its most impressive. It can not only sense the garbage, but it collects and analyses data on when a bin is expected to be full, how long it might take to fill the bin and other waste probability data. Now hopefully the rest of the world will catch on.

The post Smart Trash Bin Sensors Ask to Be Emptied When Full first appeared on Gajitz.