Trash interceptor - GIF, patent, photo

[Jon]

Sewer trash collector. Is it really this simple? What's the rub here? Difficult to collect the trash afterwards? I can think of many places where I would've liked to see this in action.

[Frank S]

I guess the greenies will have something to say about it doesn't sort for the recyclers

[owen moore]

That is a very good idea but a disgusting photo. I guess that's our throw away society.

[ranald]

I used to mow around the state of art sewer in Noosa (SEQ) and you would not believe the stuff that was collected & separated there. Condoms were the least scarey. Plastics & bras, underwear and all sorts of "gross" rubbish abounded in this tourist destination. Wild poisonous melons that looked like a normal watermelon loved the area where the crappy stuff was stored for ............? they had the normal rotating grids/filters then the effleuent was washed through 100 of feet of pure white Noosa sand & then pumped over swails for native species to further treat ( many of our natives can't live with normal phosporo s fertilisers: banksias, grivellias hakeas, etc. Interestingly, unlike others I tidied around, there was little odour & naturally we had to mow away from the ponds/pits/filtration systems to avoid contamination.

[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.

[Frank S]

A city friend of mine was visiting a while back he noticed my large bag partially filled with 2 liter soft drink bottles he asked do you recycle way out here?
Nope I decycle and re-purpose . those plastic bottles are turned into useful implements or other vessels of purposeful uses and if I ever get a large enough quantity of them I will grind them up and melt them down to be formed into a block of solid plastic to be machined into something else.
My 3 cubic yard dumpster that I pay a premium for is mostly out near the road for passers by to deposit their discards and to hopefully entice the frequent terrorist (tourist) to drop their trash in instead of hucking their rubbish along the road. Do you know what happens to discarded rubbish when the county shredders mow the right of ways 2 or 3 times a year? They for one cannot see the beer bottles and cans in the 18" tall grass and two cannot be bothered to stop their huge tractors pulling the 18 feet wide shredder mowers ecery time the see an empty deer corn sack .
I can't stand to see that stuff to be shredded along my half mile road frontage.

[Jon]

I decycle.

Good one, I need to remember this. My current line to address over-enthusiastic recycling proselytizers is:

"I cycle. We can't all recycle; someone must do the difficult work of cycling. It's people like me that make all recycling possible. You're welcome."

That being said, re-utilization or re-appropriation or whatever is perfectly reasonable, but recycling of consumer beverage containers, while practical, is one of the most common virtue signals of the past 30 years.

[Frank S]

Good one, I need to remember this. My current line to address over-enthusiastic recycling proselytizers is:

"I cycle. We can't all recycle; someone must do the difficult work of cycling. It's people like me that make all recycling possible. You're welcome."

That being said, re-utilization or re-appropriation or whatever is perfectly reasonable, but recycling of consumer beverage containers, while practical, is one of the most common virtue signals of the past 30 years.

Jon I still miss the old return for deposit glass bottles soft drink, milk etc.
They will never convince me that life was not better when glass bottles were were collected sterilized and reused.

[mklotz]

Speaking of cleaning up litter. Here...

https://www.cnn.com/2017/05/22/asia/...ver/index.html

is the story of how a Mumbai, India lawyer organized an effort to clear the city's beach of 5.3 million kilograms (11.7 million pounds) of plastic trash.

What he accomplished is certainly commendable but I can't help wondering what sort of thoughtlessness could account for that much trash being deposited there in the first place.

[PJs]

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.

Well said MeJasonT! On the initial look of this trap system, you think...Cool that'll work, but in reality it acts only as a large particulate filter and does not address the breakdown of the Trash inside from water (a most abrasive medium) and what chemicals and smaller particulates (plastics, etc.) make it downstream and into the watershed and what settles into the sediment. The star fish issue mentioned is not the only long term issue from this. I saw a documentary recently about the Mississippi and Missouri rivers and what was found deep in the sediment...chemicals (fertilizers in particular), plastics, ad nauseam, which is killing the fish, crustaceans, clams (bivalve molluscs) and plant life which feeds and supports them...and affecting them on a genetic level over the years. I hate to think about what's in the sediment of the Great Lakes...the single largest body of what used to be fresh water on the planet...or whats coming from the snow/ice melts.

Further on-land dumping has been a huge issue in Oakland lately with people dumping stuff in front of peoples homes and businesses at night. One case was a 1ton P/U truck lift bed dump truck, dumping a load of concrete in front of someones house...probably 2-3 yards worth! They have implemented an addition of $$millions program and hotlines for reporting and waste forensic "Specialists" and police...but no real slap'em silly Justice when and if they actually catch them.

The issue with Mumbai, I brought up in another thread, and a Terrific effort, but it is real in lots of third world places as well as by "Terrorists" as Frank calls them. Your point of rural townships not taking responsibility is also well taken. Seen/experienced it in Yosemite where 4 million Turons travel through per year. I still like the idea of the old style Volks March for the forest and garbage clean up, but using polluter's in gangs as well as common, decent folks that don't throw stuff willy nilly where ever they are. Not segregating the groups but honestly working together and perhaps some educating morals and ethics for a common goal...survival.

The point on incineration is good as well. A distant family tie in Canada was in on the development of a high temp system that recovered gasses (Practically Zero, NOX emissions) and left only a small pellet of non biodegradable and semi toxic substance after incineration. Unfortunately it really hasn't taken off as I think it's a scalable process that every town could have...just like Power.

You're right, I think most of us here on HMT's, Are Responsible and do our best at re-purpose, re-use and "Decycling". Hearding Cats is always a tough challenge and not accomplished by bully tactics or tyranny but doable by individuals with clarity, discernment and a "Solution Oriented" approach.

PJ