Baltimore’s ‘Trash Family’, Ocean Cleanup’s ‘Interceptors’, and Amsterdam’s ‘great bubble barrier’ are all ways to cut the amount of plastic trash flowing into the world’s oceans, developed by people who saw a problem and imagined simple, elegant and practical solutions which they then worked to put into effect. 

Back in 2008, when researchers were only starting to look at the problem of plastic pollution in the world’s oceans, Baltimore sailor and engineer John Kellett got tired of seeing a river of trash flow into the city’s inner harbour after it rained. The machine he sketched out, powered by an old-fashioned water wheel, has grown into a family of “Trash Wheels” which catch trash, generate electrical power, attract tourists, and have inspired similar ideas elsewhere.

The Dutch technology nonprofit, Ocean Cleanup, has set the ambitious goal of turning off the tap — the 1,000 of the world’s rivers that send 80% of the plastic pollution into the ocean. It started out to clean up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, and then worked secretly to tackle the problem at its source – in rivers. Eleven of its solar-powered Interceptor vessels now catch plastic from rivers before it enters the ocean – in Indonesia, Malaysia (2), Viet Nam, Dominican Republic, Jamaica (4) and Los Angeles in the US.

The “Great Bubble Barrier” uses a curtain of bubbles to stop trash flowing into the ocean in two Netherlands cities and soon Portugal and Germany. Its origin story involves an Australian water treatment plant, bubbles in beer, a German ocean engineer, and three Dutch sailors who were tired of seeing trash in the ocean.