If you’ve ever liked or supported a page on Facebook that has to do with plastic pollution, you may have seen an advertisement for a $20 dollar bracelet made of plastic yanked from the ocean. 4ocean removes one pound of trash from the world’s oceans per bracelet purchased, and after a long almost 3 year slog, 4ocean is closing in on 8 million pounds of trash pulled from the sea.
Cleanup efforts are currently underway in Florida, Bali, and Haiti—and now 4ocean is expanding its presence and operations into Central America, an area that is suffering from a blight earning it the moniker “trash islands”.
Tens of millions of pounds of ocean trash are believed to be floating in and along Central America’s ocean and coastlines, due to minimal infrastructure and multiple river systems flowing from city centers directly into the oceans.
The 4ocean founders Andrew Cooper and Alex Schulze, who were included in Forbes’ 30 Entrepreneurs Under 30 last year, see Rio Motagua in Guatemala as a critical opportunity to stem the tide of garbage moving into the ocean.
MORE: Dutch Guy Famous for Cleaning Up Pacific Garbage Patch is Now Clearing the World’s Rivers Too
“Expanding our cleanup operations into Central America offers us an opportunity to create significant change in the ocean plastic crisis,” said Schulze. “Our plan is to not only remove millions of pounds of plastic by leveraging innovative cleanup technologies, but to also stop plastic pollution at its source by working with local communities to change plastic consumption habits.”
Upon opening its Central American operations, 4ocean aims to employ more than twenty local workers, and utilize six trash-collecting vessels—as well as the 4ocean Mobile Skimmer, an original watercraft designed to remove large quantities of debris in high-density areas. In addition, they will install boom collection systems at large river mouths to minimize the amount of pollution that enters the ocean.
Last week, 4ocean’s Haiti team removed 65,000 pounds of trash from the ocean and rivers, and according to press contacts, 4ocean is aiming to remove 1 million pounds of garbage from the Rio Motagua and the Central American Atlantic in its first year on site.
4ocean is not the only group extinguishing trash in the world’s rivers. Boyan Slat, the young Dutch engineer who is collecting shipping containers of trash from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, recently expanded his gaze to include the worst polluted rivers.
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His river-going vessel, The Interceptor, is now keeping trash from reaching the ocean in Jakarta and Malaysia by extending a water-permeable barrier across the river. The Interceptor then scoops the plastic out of the water using a conveyor belt and deposits it onto a shuttle that moves across the length of the barge and deposits the trash into one of 6 dumpsters which is remotely brought ashore for recycling. (Check out the photos and videos here.)
Put your money where your social media mouthpiece is: Buy a bracelet, or donate to Boyan Slat’s genius Ocean Cleanup Foundation, to support its river work, too.
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