The solar machines catching river plastic before it reaches the sea
Most of the plastic in our oceans does not begin in the ocean at all. It washes down rivers, and just a thousand of them carry the bulk of it. The Ocean Cleanup, the group behind this idea, decided to meet the problem right there, with a machine called the Interceptor. Powered by the sun, it sits quietly in a river and gathers floating rubbish onto a conveyor before it can ever reach the sea, working on its own, day and night.
The scale is starting to tell. Interceptors are now at work in rivers across six countries, and together the group's systems have pulled more than forty million kilograms of trash from the environment. Their newest and largest stands guard on Guatemala's Rio Motagua, a last line of defence for the Gulf of Honduras. It is a hopeful reminder that catching a problem early is often the cleverest fix of all.