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Cleaning the Oceans, One Marina at a Time

Two Australian surfers have invented a technology to clean oceans that has raised interest from investors across the world. Having spent their childhood in the ocean, Andrew Turton and Pete Ceglinski found themselves fed-up and frustrated at the huge amount of rubbish floating around in the ocean and together decided to resign from their jobs in order to dedicate their time and energy on researching for a sustainable solution.

Seabin is the name of the innovative technology and it’s an automated rubbish bin for any marina docks called. The hope of many is that this technology will help reduce ocean pollution. Andrew Turton and Pete Ceglinski designed a prototype of the bin in Perth and thereafter took it to the public market in Mallorca in Spain which is arguably the marina capital of Europe with the help of WA seed investors Shark Mitigation Systems. At the moment, the pair is at the moment seeking to secure ample seed money to actualize the prototype. With high public interest, the idea is rapidly gained momentum with crowdfunding raising $61,000 for commercial production coupled with a video of the Seabin receiving views particularly from European countries of more than 10 million hits online.

The Seabin is seen as more efficient than a marine worker walking around with a scoop net. The Seabin is made of recycled materials and is fixed to a dock with water pump running on shore power.

The pump creates a flow of water that sucks all floating rubbish and debris into a natural fibre bag, before pumping and releasing the water. Everything floating from plastic bottles to paper, oils, fuel and detergent is caught by the Seabin.

As put forth by Richard Talmage who is Seabin spokesman, the concept was simple but effective.

“It essentially works as a similar concept to a skimmer box from your pool filter. But it’s designed on a scale to work and essentially attract all that rubbish within a location within a marine harbor,” Talmage said.

Marinas, ports and yacht clubs were the best place to begin ocean cleaning as high levels of human activity with oil and fuel pollution is seen within their surroundings.

It’s expected that the invention will limit floating out into the open ocean of toxic materials from where they can degrade and be eaten by marine life causing deaths. This model could help prevent chemicals from plastics becoming part of the marine food chain as Mr Talmage states: “There’s not only the pollution side, but for the broader environment, and then extending that through marina’s into education for local communities as well, so that one day we can drive towards a cleaner environment for everyone that’s using the water,”

A research and development center has been setup in Mallorca to develop production techniques. The idea as stated by Mr Ceglinski is the need to build the Seabin in the most sustainable and ecologically responsible way as they can which is costly and that’s why they thought of trying crowd funding.

The Seabin concept targets to complement the costly alternative of using trash boats and vessels driving around harbors scooping up rubbish with nets built into them. With a successful establishment it’s expected that in mid to late 2016, Seabins will likely be in the market.

To visit the crowdfunding page https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/cleaning-the-oceans-one-marina-at-a-time#/

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