Trash interceptor - GIF, patent, photo

[MeJasonT]

Great idea, this one looks like it doesn't get daily attention. Some poor family up stream is getting the increased backlog of water/waste as its dammed by the net at the bottom. Our town has flooded twice in the last ten years and the good old un civil engineers have been more of a menace than a saviour, their latest fix was to add another meter in height to the flood defences. The last time the town flooded it was the water not being able to escape from the inside of the defences - so now it will get a metre deeper?, pure genius. In 1827 the Solway firth was excavated and dredged to allow tall ships to offload cargo in the town, now thanks to the tree huggers the Solway has been deemed a natural marsh and protected as a nature area. It winds me up how some peoples actions are carried out without any thought or logic as to the consequences. having said that catch all that plastic is a brilliant idea for the planets future. We cant always blame plastic when we should really be educating people to dispose of the damn stuff properly. That includes our local services who at present stuff it in land fill. Incineration is a better idea but it releases gasses like cyanide into the atmosphere, It has to be a multistage solution where any secondary waste created from a process is also processed Ie. capture the gasses from incineration, turn hydrocarbons into solids for manufacturing or disposal. Its just cheaper and less profitable to dump the waste, so is the problem caused be the general public or the greed of corporations ummm? Just read an article last week where they claim plastics were found in a star fish which had been kept for other scientific research back in 1975, apparently the problem has been around since then. funny, growing up i cant remember so much plastic in the 70s. Unless the fish had all eaten tiddlywinks (counters). I put it down to attitude, in the countryside the only trash blowing around and lying in feilds and roadsides is that dumped by townies. In the town there is loans of trash lying around on the streets, townies ?. When you look at the waste including Jons picture above you can identify milk cartons, beveridge bottles, sandwich containers and fast food packaging. this waste is produced by two kinds of people the young and business people grabbing lunch. As we are predominantly Engineers on this site we are educated to look for root cause and there we have it, two sectors of society who could be argued couldn't give a hoot, someone else will clean it up. The vast majority of us don't dump garbage outside our house - i never say plastic bottles lying in the streets, upstate New York. The solution isn't a big net over a fall pipe, euthanasia might work. How many members do we have on the site Jon, i bet not one is irresponsible when it comes to disposing of waste. By the way i'm not a greeny just an engineer - a solution orientated individual.