Seabin: A New Way to Clean Up Ports and Marinas

A group of innovators from Spain have designed an automated rubbish bin that catches floating rubbish, oil, fuel and detergents. It is designed for floating docks in the water of marinas, private pontoons, inland waterways, residential lakes, harbors, water ways, ports and yacht clubs.

Marinas, ports and yacht clubs are the perfect place to start helping clean our oceans, says the group. There are no huge open ocean swells or storms, but winds and currents are constantly moving floating debris around and ports and marinas always have some pollution heavy areas based on predominant wind and current directions.

“By working with these marinas, ports and yacht clubs we can locate the Seabin in the perfect place and mother nature brings us the rubbish to catch it,” says the group.

The Seabin is located at the water’s surface and is plumbed into a shore based water pump on the dock. The water gets sucked into the Seabin, bringing all floating debris and floating liquids into it. The water then flows out through the bottom of the bin and up into the pump on the dock where there is the option of installing an oil/water separator so that clean water then flows back into the ocean.

Inside the Seabin, there is a natural fiber “catch bag” which collects all the floating debris. When this is full or near to full, the marina worker changes the catch bag with another one. The collected debris is then disposed of responsibly.

The Seabin still works if is full. The flow of the water simply pulls all the surrounding floating debris against the Seabin and keeps it there. The marina worker would simply scoop up the surrounding debris and then change the catch bag as normal.

The group is looking for funding and aims to have Seabin in production by mid to end of 2016.

More information is available here.