Western Australia and NSW are the first two states in Australia to have their very own rubbish bins in the ocean.
The Seabin, designed by two surfers in 2015, is essentially a rubbish bin that sucks in rubbish from the water and catches it in a filtration system.
CEO Pete Ceglinski quit his job in order to make the Seabin a reality across the world.
“We came up with the idea with the very lateral thought of if we have rubbish bins on the land, why don’t we put them in the water. So we did that,” Ceglinski told news.com.au.
“It is basically a floating rubbish bin. We have a submersible water pump at the bottom, we bring water from the top, we pump it out the bottom and in the middle … we catch it with a filter.”
Eager donors to their crowd-funding campaign ended up raising over $300,000 for the prototype of the device in two months.
Countries around the world now have Seabins installed to help clear their waterways and there are orders flowing in from around the globe for people eager to get their hands on a Seabin.
A single bin can hold up to 20kg of rubbish and are cheap to run, costing less than a dollar a day.
“The most common things we catch are micro plastics, followed by food wrappers and cigarette butts,” Mr Ceglinski said.
“The weirdest thing we have collected was probably a cowboy boot with a mini pineapple inside, which was found in San Diego.
“The best thing I found was 20 bucks that had floated into the Seabin.”
Sometimes, marine life gets into the Seabin, which is a fault that’s been recognised by the company.
“Every now and then we do catch some bait fish but because the Seabin filter is still in the water, they are still alive when we find them and we can throw them back,” Mr Ceglinski said.
“To lower this risk, we have been working with marine scientists who have assured us that the trade-off of this verses catching all this contaminated plastic is worth it.”
Would you like to see more Seabins cleaning the ocean around Australia?
This article was written in partnership with Over60.