It is one of those simple ideas that is taking on a big task – protecting the environment by catching the plastic waste in the rivers before it flows into the ocean. It led one man in Baltimore to develop a whole family of ‘trash wheels’, and a nonprofit in the Netherlands to develop what it calls the ‘interceptor’.

The Ocean Cleanup has now put four interceptors to work in Jamaica, with the latest – 011 – being placed in Kingston Harbour, and it has gotten impressive reviews from California, where 007 collected more than 35,000 pounds of trash in Ballona Creek, which flows into Santa Monica Bay. The floating barrier had been put in place a month earlier.