A pair of Aussie designer/surfers living in Mallorca, Spain, have come up with a revolutionary invention to keep marinas clean and stop dangerous plastic floating out to sea.
Pete Ceglinski, born and raised in the Byron Shire, is one of the designers of the Seabin, which floats on the surface of the water automatically picking up garbage 24/7.
Pete and co-designer Andrew Turton, from the Gold Coast, have developed a prototype of the new bin, which they have got to this stage with assistance from the Australian company Shark Attack Mitigation Systems.
Andrew says ‘the majority of my childhood I spent in the water.’
He adds, he decided to do something after realising ‘there’s nothing worse than being out there surrounded by plastic’.’
Pete says he was drawn to the project after quitting his job designing plastic products.
‘After a while I realised that we didn’t need the stuff that I was making – and so I stopped.
‘I met Andrew. He told me about this project – and it just clicked,’ Pete says.
Now the pair have turned to crowd-funding platform Kickstarter to get production up and running.
Using simple pump technology, not unlike a household swimming pool, the Seabin catches floating rubbish, oil, fuel and detergents.
It designed for floating docks in the water of marinas, private pontoons, inland waterways, residential lakes, harbours, waterways, ports and yacht clubs.
How it works
The Seabin sits on surface of the water and is plumbed into a shore-based water pump on the dock. The water gets sucked into the Seabin, bringing all the 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,’ says Pete.
‘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,’ he adds.
‘Inside the Seabin we have a natural fiber “catch bag” that 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.’
Pete says one aim of the project is to recycle the plastic collected from each Seabin as the basis for the next one they build.
‘For me the project is amazing. We could have a better time at the beach because we’re not swimming in plastic. We’d even eat better because the fish are healthier.’
A prototype is currently running at Real Club Nautic in Palma, Mallorca, and the Seabin will be showcased at the world’s biggest marine trade show. METS, in Amsterdam later this month.
But the guys still have a big job ahead of them to raise the funds to get it into production – they need to crack $230,000 by December 15 if the project is to get up and running.
Sounds like a scam to me.