Making Ports Cleaner – The Port Bin Tide
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New Norwegian technology is helping to solve marine waste problems in ports.
A number of ports in Europe are now using this new Norwegian developed technology to collect marine litter from the water surface. There are now also over 12 units in use around the UK from Orkneys to Guernsey and interest has been growing from other UK Ports and harbours.
Littering is having an impact on water quality in many ports and a number of area’s are becoming increasingly polluted. There is too much marine litter floating around in ports and our goal is to collect most of the waste and encourage the adoption of a simple effective cleaning tool that will bring environmental and social benefits to a cleaner port/harbour/marina application.
The Portbin tide is an Automated marine waste collector.
Spill tech the Norwegian manufacturer has been involved for many years in pollution clean up applications in ports, river and beach cleaning applications dealing with plastic pollution. The Portbin tide was created in conjunction with the Port of Bergen, the Norwegian department of environment and Spilltech to have a product that deals effectively with marine litter.
The Portbin tide has the same type of principle of a weir skimmer whereby the waste is collected through a “bucket” with a pump in the bottom of the unit so it will collect marine waste.
The marine waste is collected in a 30L basket with holes in it, enabling marine life to swim in and out, when the basket is full this can be emptied as and when required.
A number of calculations have been done that in a number of locations and anything between 2 to 6 marine litter per day could be collected with the Portbin tide.
An important aspect of the development work has been to ensure that the equipment is easy to use and yet robust enough to withstand the environment, as even inside a port seawater wind and waves can provide harsh conditions.
The idea is that the Portbin tide can be placed in trash coves (areas where current, wind and tide accumulate floating marine litter) in and around a harbour or port. Marine litter in the sea is a huge problem, which also effects ports - the Portbin tide is a great tool to reduce marine waste. Not forgetting that most of the unit is made from recycled materials.
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