Mr. Trash Wheel is gobbling up millions of pounds of trash:
One of the biggest personalities in Baltimore isn't playing on a sports field or occupying an office in city hall. Instead, he's performing the rather ordinary task of cleaning the city's waterways. But that's exactly what's made him famous. Maybe you're one of his millions of Twitter followers or you've eagerly posed next to him for a selfie.
He's Mr. Trash Wheel, a large garbage interceptor that works nonstop to clean rubbish in the Jones Falls stream of Baltimore's Inner Harbor. Sporting a gaping maw of a mouth, he's winning hearts and minds by improving the prized waterfront of Maryland's largest city. And by stopping trash before it can empty into the Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean, he's making a difference far from the city limits.
[...] The Trash Wheels employ a straightforward technology: A large water mill is turned by the flowing river which powers a system of pulleys that turn a large conveyor belt and an array of rakes which help scoop floating debris onto the conveyor belt as trash floats down stream. The trash wheel has 2 long floating buoys which trap garbage that's floating on the surface and funnels it into the mouth of Mr. Trash Wheel. From there it gets carried up the conveyor belt and emptied into a large dumpster. A small crew easily removes and empties the floating dumpsters as they get full.
Power for the belt comes from river currents that turn the water mill, but the Trash Wheels are also outfitted with solar panels and batteries for times when the river isn't flowing fast enough to turn the wheel.
Kellet is able to switch on pumps remotely from his smartphone that then pump water onto the wheel so it never stops turning and gobbling garbage. Mr. Trash Wheel also has an internet connection so Kellet can see what's happening on the vessel via webcam and take action if needed.
After designing his concept, Kellet contacted the city, which was open to new ideas for combating the trash flowing into the harbor. He eventually partnered with a nonprofit called the Abell Foundation, which put up money to develop and refine the Trash Wheel concept. After much trial and error and months of testing and building Mr. Trash Wheel was installed in Baltimore's Harbor.
Once Mr. Trash Wheel was operational, business and community leaders noticed the immediate improvement in the harbor's pollution levels and lobbied to make the wheel a permanent fixture. The Waterfront Partnership of Baltimore, a nonprofit funded by a coalition of local businesses, then got involved and began a campaign to produce more Trash Wheels and install them in other areas of Baltimore.
Adam Lindquist is the director of the Waterfront Partnership's Healthy Harbor Initiative, which aims to beautify the region by planting sustainable plants and organizing cleanup events and projects to improve the environment. He said Mr. Trash Wheel has impacted the Baltimore Harbor in ways that he could never have imagined and has delivered valuable data about where all the trash comes from.
"If you go to MrTrashWheel.com you can actually download a spreadsheet of every dumpster we've pulled out of the harbor over the past seven years, with an estimate of different types of trash that was in that dumpster," Lindquist said. "We know that we've pulled out over a million styrofoam containers from the harbor, and that's the sort of information, data and photos that we share with our elected officials to let them know just how big of a problem this is."
Now we need an electronic version to clean the internet seas. The web page also claims at the time of editing that it has recovered:
"5,1329 x SPORTS BALLS".
I'm not sure, but I think that is a very big number...
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday June 16 2021, @03:36AM (10 children)
They need one of these located downstream of every major city in America. Somewhere close to where the suburbs give way to rural. Sure, rural people toss trash too, but the concentrations fall dramatically once you've driven past the most downstream subdivision.
Better yet, every city in the world.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 16 2021, @04:07AM
We need many of these located downstream of every Jewish mouth in America. They'll trap more shit than San Antonio's Riverwalk.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 16 2021, @04:18AM
Rural people throw more trash. I have seen them dump their trash into coulees, streams, bayous, and rivers. Downstream ain't their problem. And the junk cars, as Rip-rap erosion control. The problems is the hillbillies,up in the hills, with no environmental awareness and little scientific knowledge. This is why Arkansas is not all that good. [nytimes.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 16 2021, @08:15AM (5 children)
The fucking title should have been "Americans are Throwing Millions of Pounds of Trash in Jones Falls Stream alone"
Have you ever wonder what the real problem may be? Isn't maybe the feeling of entitlement the amuricans have to do, that feeling of being free to do as they fucking like and demand others to pay for it?
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday June 16 2021, @08:51AM (3 children)
Yeah, well, you make a point - but trashing the countryside and waterways isn't uniquely American. I'll never forget Lisbon, Portugal, where the harbor was on open sewer. Poland has made a few headlines for the sewerage and trash flowing down it's rivers. With all it's video surveillance, the UK has it's problems with illegal "tipping". Was it Rio De Janeiro that had to change the venue for Olympic swimmers, because of the raw sewerage?
If you really want me to, I could probably look up the water quality for the world's 50 biggest cities, and compare them to LA and NY.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 16 2021, @09:14AM
Bottom line, will this improve the quality of american rivers? If not, why bother?
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday June 16 2021, @01:32PM
Close to what I was thinking. Mr. Trash Wheel is a nice idea and all, but unnecessary if only people would stop being so trashy.
Raw sewage, yeah. I heard from a guy who visits Hong Kong regularly that we don't realize how nice we have it in the US-- how much cleaner everything is. I understand that air filters are a big part of life in China.
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Wednesday June 16 2021, @08:24PM
The real problem in the US is that it seems the "powers that be" look at places that are more trashed, seem to feel that they are over regulated and that they could make more profit if they could do the same. If the right political regime gets in power they get closer to doing just that.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 16 2021, @08:53AM
I saw this same behavior when I visited the Caribbean from a relative of one of the people I was visiting. To make matters worse, his point that it was the locals who littered more than the tourists was correct. I made sure to pack all my garbage away, but many others out for visits were tossing floating garbage into the ocean just off the cliffs (rather beautiful ones with otherwise clean water, unlike what many regions of the US Pacific coastline have begun to look like :(
(Score: 2) by driverless on Wednesday June 16 2021, @08:57AM (1 child)
Also next to capitol hill. Perhaps several due to the volume they'd have to handle.
(Score: 2) by coolgopher on Wednesday June 16 2021, @09:21AM
Hey, don't bash the trickle down economics...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 16 2021, @05:11AM (2 children)
Mr. Trash Wheel is a registered trademark (™) of Amazon Corporation and is an exclusive service mark of its owner, THE ONE TRUE GOD, and may not be used in any other way except by license. This is fare warning, Soylent News…
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Wednesday June 16 2021, @06:13AM (1 child)
I think you mean fair warning.... Or does one have to pay to ride on it?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 16 2021, @08:18AM
Of course, that's the very essence of capitalism.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Gaaark on Wednesday June 16 2021, @10:32AM
I thought this was another article about Donald Trump!
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 16 2021, @10:44AM (3 children)
Why does a device that solves problems automatically get named "Mister". Are you implying that women are only good for breeding and making sandwiches? I submit that this craft should be renamed "Dr. Trash Wheel" to add much-needed gender ambiguity.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday June 16 2021, @12:12PM (2 children)
Professor Trash Wheel℠ Dislikes: the patriarchy
Captain Trash Wheel℠ Dislikes: gender-specific pronouns
Gwynnda the Good Wheel of the West℠ Likes: astrology, Ouija Boards
Who would even have thought that the promotion of non-scientific bullshit would go hand in hand with rabid issues-ism?
You know, they could have kept this just about green issues to do with polluting the environment, and that would have been on point and relevant and thus educational and useful. But no, they had to get all soapboxy, not realising that their soap is a pollutant.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 16 2021, @03:55PM (1 child)
Deep breaths.
At least all this trash will be nicely packaged and shipped to China who will dump it in the ocean where it belongs.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 16 2021, @05:59PM
Off topic
What's interesting is that many third world countries are broken partly because of cultural differences between those countries and more successful countries.
Now the new narrative from the democrats is that that's not the dominant reason why, the explanation is because of past interference from first world countries and third world countries.
This is interesting because it suggests that the solution is for us to stop interfering with these countries (both parties are responsible for this). Yet the democrats want to solve the problem by continuing to interfere.
Perhaps we need to stop sending them money (a form of interference) and close our borders and stop sending Kamala Harris to these other countries where she mostly gets booed so that she can continue interfering with them (well, I don't mind sending them money if we get something in return, like them taking back the people that made their way here and them doing a better job of controlling the outflow their citizens). Isn't the problem that we keep interfering with them? Then let's leave the alone and worry about ourselves. Close our borders.
What's interesting is that crime rates in democratic states have gone up. Baltimore now has higher murder rates than El Salvador and when Tucker Carlson interviewed the president of El Salvador (after he cut crime by 75 percent) asking him what the U.S. should do to cut our own crime rates his suggestion is that we need to be tough on crime. Yet the democrats want to de-fund the police and they continue to make their states turn more and more into Skid Row all the while asking for votes to solve the social problems that they created.
If we want people to stop making bad decisions we need to be tough on those bad decisions. Subsidizing bad decisions, which is what the democrats keep doing, will only cause more people to make more and more bad decisions.
Also there is absolutely nothing racist about trying to control our borders.
We also need to stop letting the democrats keep trying to divide us. When Joe Biden says stuff like 10 to 15 Percent of Americans are not very good people he is doing what the democrats have always been doing. He's trying to divide us. Trying to divide us by political position, race, religion, class, gender, etc... It's the same trick democrats/socialists have been using to divide their people for many decades. It's an old trick. We shouldn't let them get away with it. We need to stand united despite out differences.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by ElizabethGreene on Wednesday June 16 2021, @02:30PM (2 children)
These folks do a great job publishing data. It's 10/10, 5 stars, A+, would read again.
Since commissioning the new one in 2014 with data up through January, Mr. Trash wheel has collected trash totaling 1450 tons. If divided into semi-trucks based on weight, that would be about 50 semi-trucks. The volume of trash collected is 6982 cubic yards. If divided into semi trucks based on volume, that's about 80 trailer loads. In practice they actually have shipped 453 dumpsters. I assume the significant discrepancy there is because you don't want a dumpster of stinky rotting flotsam sitting around in the Maryland sun.
The primary trash by count is cigarette butts, Polystyrene (I assume foam cups, straws, and packing material), plastic bottles, chip bags, and grocery bags.
Source: (EXCEL SHEET) https://www.mrtrashwheel.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/NEW-Trash-Wheel-Collection-Totals-7-2020-2.xlsx [mrtrashwheel.com]
The original construction cost, per Wikipedia, was $720,000. Information regarding operating cost was not immediately available. Information regarding related tourism revenue was also not immediately available.
Observation: Can we take a moment to appreciate the genius of the person that put googly eyes on this thing to brain hack people into Anthropomorphizing it? I live in a landlocked state 700 miles away and I'm familiar with it. That's brilliant.
My top-of-mind takeaway is that someone should invent biodegradable cigarette filters. Bing-ing that shows that a company, GreenButts, has done just that, but they have not been widely adopted yet.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 16 2021, @03:59PM (1 child)
Bing-ing? That sounds like one of those words I don't want to look up on Urban Dictionary.
Bing, v. When a male during sexual intercourse taps his penis onto the clitoris.
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Thursday June 17 2021, @04:23PM
It's a quirk of trying to verbify my default search engine. Binge and Binging are both food consumption terms and I don't want to overload them. I could have used $SEARCH_ENGINE, and normally would, but it didn't occur to me this time.
Full disclosure, I work for Microsoft and Bing is one of their products. I don't use it because of that though; I use it because of Bing Rewards. I sign in to my personal account for search and in exchange I get points which I use for free Xbox Live gift cards for my Kiddos.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 16 2021, @05:27PM
That name is already taken.