I'm Nick Wesley, one of the co-founders of Urban Rivers, and I want to talk about
our trash robot; trash is everywhere, so let's clean it up, we need your help to
build a device to remove this from the Chicago River. In June, thanks to your
help on Kickstarter, we were able to install a floating garden to clean the
Chicago River; the problem though is we started to get a lot of trash
accumulation throughout the season, birds and other wildlife would then have to
deal with this onslaught of garbage, so we did what anyone would do, we tried to
clean it up; first, we scooped it out with nets: problem, it came too fast; then, we
decided to find a solution that would always be there, so we built this trash
robot that can be operated by anyone, anywhere, at any time, this is something
where anybody can just log-on, get a couple minutes, clean up some bottles
from the river and really make an impact; players will be able to control this
robot in real life, directly from their computer, they will use it to remove
trash from the river and gain points for doing so; the robot will fill it's hopper,
dump at one of our collection points, where one of our team members will come, sort,
and remove this trash; users will be able to see through the robot's eyes as
they're collecting this trash, getting it out of the river and making it safer for
the ducks, geese, and other wildlife who live in that area. We really hope that
one day this game is just so boring, because there's no more trash left to
clean; we have assembled a Trash Bot Task Force to tackle this issue head-on, this
group consists of people from a diverse background, people who have experience
in web development, people who have built drones, people who have built MRI machines;
part of Urban Rivers mission is to create a wildlife first approach to the
problems facing our rivers. Now, this is just the beginning, this is capable of so
much more: first, it's trash; next, wildlife
monitoring, fish monitoring, finding ways to interact and create a really
functional habitat; we believe this device needs to be open-source, we want
to create a community around cleaning rivers;
become an early supporter of this project and help us clean the Chicago River.
Majority of my childhood was always within the water; there's nothing worse
than being out there surrounded by plastic. I was a Product Designer in
another life, and it was my job to make plastic products, and after a while, I
realized that we didn't need the stuff that I was making and so I stopped.
I met Andrew and he told me about his project, and I just clicked; for me, the
project was amazing, we could have a better time at the beach, because we're
not swimming in plastic and pollution anymore;
we'd even eat better, because the fish are healthier. Marinas, Ports and Yacht Clubs
is the perfect place for the Seabin, there's no massive ocean storms, it's a
controlled environment, it catches everything floating in
the water: plastic bottles, paper, oil, fuel, and detergent; 24 hours a day, seven days
a week, 365 days a year.
Another good thing with the location of the Seabin, is that people can see what
they're catching, what they're swimming in. It's been a big change in
our lives, we quit our jobs, we've taken all our money, and we've put our
heart and souls into making this happen. One of our goals is to make the Seabin
from our own plastics to create another Seabin, to capture more, it's a domino
effect. The second goal is to create a world
where we don't need the Seabins; imagine that, we have a pollution-free
ocean for our future generations.