River Cleaner
Blue Eco Line is a start up active in the fight against marine plastics pollution. We address this challenge through a preventive approach, targeting rivers to intercept and prevent plastic waste from reaching the sea.
Overview of the project
Our project provides for the installation of River Cleaner, in its floating version, near the estuary and on the left bank of the San Rocco Canal that crosses the Grossetana plain near the city of Grosseto. This is a strategic place where debris, mostly plastic waste, has been stacking up for years causing hazards to navigation and inconvenience to neighboring bathing areas, not to mention land management.
River Cleaner is an innovative installation that captures and conveys floating waste from rivers directly to the street level in a fully automated way. River Cleaner is eco-friendly, energetically-sufficient and can be easily incorporated in an urban context; thanks to a combination of industrial automatization, IoT and AI, the system automatically adapts its configuration to external conditions and allows a safe and complete remote control. This allows for a significant cut down of management costs, thus making our solution a cost-effective one compared to the current alternatives present on the market. By automatically conveying riverine plastic litter to the street level, River Cleaner allows local waste-managing companies to easily dispose and recycle riverine waste through the means already at their disposal.
After obtaining the required permits and signing the agreements for the financing, construction and allocation of the plant, River Cleaner is now ready to be installed and activated on site.
New collection facility in Grosseto: halting plastic flow and protecting the sea with River Cleaner
Pilote operation, experimentation
01/23/23 - project still in progress
River Cleaner is currently going through the final stages of assembly and tests before the on-site implementation, therefore it’s too early to analyze quantitative data.
Assumed estimates for the pilot plant foresee the removal of 40 m^3 of organic and plastic material during 2024.
The qualitative results we aim to achieve include: field testing of River Cleaner, monitoring of its efficiency – both energy and harvesting – and the response of the device to flood events and heavy rainfall.
Our project was financed through a sponsorship contract with ESTRA spa, an energy multi-utility operating in the electricity, gas and waste sectors. This collaboration has proved to be particularly synergistic, as Estra, in addition to providing the budget for the construction of River Cleaner, will manage the waste collected by the plant, taking it to their own waste treatment facilities.
organisation
Blue Eco Line is a start up active in the fight against marine plastics pollution. We address this challenge through a preventive approach, targeting rivers to intercept and prevent plastic waste from reaching the sea. We design automated monitoring systems capable of identifying floating plastic, along with automated collection facilities that allow local municipalities to treat river waste as if it were urban waste. Additionally, our outreach efforts on social media involve environmental education initiatives, especially targeting younger generations to raise awareness about the importance of protecting the environment. The goal is to not only address the immediate issue of plastic pollution but also to instil a sense of environmental responsibility for long-term sustainability.
in collaboration
Grosseto Municipality, Ecolat, Regione Toscana, Consorzio di Bonifica 6 Toscana Sud, CentroStlye.