Indonesia was one of the countries that came from our global plastic influx models
That’s a theoretical study to see where the plastic in the ocean is actually coming from
Everywhere you go in Jakarta you see plastic lying around everywhere, so on the streets and in waterways
But what you also see is that they’re doing a lot of work. People in orange suits
they sweep the streets, they clean the waterways with floating barriers
and even though they’re doing a lot of hard work, you can still see a lot of the pollution is coming past
It’s such a persistent problem, clogging up every pump in the Jakarta area. And we thought hey,
why not combine the efforts to see if we can tackle two problems at once.
So, for us, it’s the plastic only to the ocean, for Indonesia it’s the plastic pollution
and also the problems with the pumps they have
I’m Sjoerd, I’m part of The Ocean Cleanup’s river project and I’m a mechanical engineer
and I’ve been involved with this project from the beginning in 2015
We are now developing the technology
but it’s not the only part of the solution. You need the local people
and people all around the world to embrace it
to ensure that we get this project going and get the world clean
My name is Bagus and here I work as project coordinator
but also a representative for The Ocean Cleanup in Indonesia.
Well I’m happy to work in this project especially as we know
that we are trying to improve the environment here by collecting more waste in the river
You have to contribute to the society, to the environment and this project is very nice
and I’m happy to be here
This is indeed the first dirty river that we’re trying this in.
We’ve tested this system in the Netherlands in 2017
and we had to add test debris because there just wasn’t any waste in the river
So, my name is Carlo Wesseling and I am the Operations Manager for the extraction team
and my job is basically to get the things on the location that they’re supposed to be
and in the rivers that they’re supposed to be
and get them operating
That’s my responsibility within The Ocean Cleanup
Actually, this is the first time I’ve seen the prototype in real life
I’ve been trying to get it here for almost a year, so it’s very exciting to see it
We’ll let the Indonesian guys run the system today, so I’ll merely be supervising
and yeah, lets see how they do today
So basically, this solution works in two basic steps.
You have the barrier doing the concentration part
so instead of having waste all over the river width, it concentrates it to the mouth of the system
And then you have the extraction part and that extracts
the debris from the water and deposits it into big bags
The big bags are then taken to shore and to recycling
But you see a massive difference, and you see the flow towards the system and the debris
accumulating in front of the system and basically all the water behind the barrier is so much
cleaner than the water that hits the barrier.
A dirty river comes in, a clean river comes out
The piece of the project that the people all know is the Ocean project, of course
so getting the plastic out there that’s already in the gyres in the oceans.
But The Ocean Cleanup has always had the second goal of closing the tap
so stopping new plastic from reaching the gyres
and of course, we start at the rivers because it’s a big source of plastic
Tackle the problem from two sides