Coldplay Sponsors River Trash Interceptor for The Ocean Cleanup

• Coldplay has partnered with The Ocean Cleanup to help clean the world’s polluted rivers.
• The band sponsored Interceptor 005, which catches trash in the rivers before it can flow out into the ocean.
• The interceptor is now being manufactured in Malaysia where it will also be placed.

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Boyan Slat, CEO of The Ocean Cleanup, has long admired the band Coldplay for its efforts to promote a better environment through their music. Now that the band has sponsored his initiative’s newest ‘Interceptor’, we can listen to beautiful music from the band while enjoying the view of clean rivers and oceans.

Chris Martin and his bandmates said, “Without action, there could be more plastic than fish in the oceans by 2050. We’re proud to sponsor Interceptor 005 which will catch thousands of tons of waste before it reaches the ocean.”

The Ocean Cleanup developed the semi-autonomous watercraft Interceptor to take out plastic from our rivers before it flows into our oceans. This is a shift from the earlier focus of pulling out trash from the oceans.

The Interceptor 005, nicknamed Neo Moon 1, will be funded by Coldplay and is now being manufactured by the non-profits’ partner in Malaysia, Konecranes.

It will be installed in one of Malaysia’s rivers later in the spring of this year.

In 2019, the first solar-powered Interceptors were launched in 2 of the 50 worst polluted rivers in the world— the Klang River in Kuala Lumpur and the Cengkareng Drain in Jakarta. The extractors can pluck out 220,000 pounds (100,000 kilos) of garbage per day.

Rio Ozama in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic was the location for the third interceptor.

The barges are interconnected through the internet for performance data gathering and collection. The system also allows vessels to regularly notify local operators when the dumpsters onboard are filled.

From just one interceptor, soon the world’s heavily polluted waters in Thailand, Vietnam, Jamaica, and the United States will be armed with several. It’s reminiscent of how The Ocean Cleanup has grown from a teenager’s vision to a non-profit organization that has almost 100 engineers and researchers in its employ.

The newest collaboration with Coldplay could broaden The Ocean Cleanup’s goal in having Interceptors all over the world’s most polluted rivers.

It might just echo one of the English band’s blockbuster hits, ‘Fix You.’ Fix it while it is still in the rivers before it flows into a bigger area like the oceans. 

Source: Good News Network