Giving Compass' Take:

• The Interceptor OO1, created by the Netherlands-based nonprofit organization, The Ocean Cleanup (TOC), run by solar power, is trying to prevent trash from washing out into the ocean. 

• How can donors help fund research for devices such as these to thrive? 

• Read more about the nonprofit that works with this device. 

It had rained all morning across Jakarta on the first Tuesday in February. The rivers in the Indonesian capital quickly filled up, carrying all kinds of debris toward the Java Sea. In one of the city’s largest waterways, a Dutch-made device was trapping some of the trash to prevent it from washing out into the ocean.

The Interceptor 001 had been shipped to Jakarta in early 2019 by its inventor, the Rotterdam, Netherlands-based nonprofit organisation The Ocean Cleanup (TOC). The prototype has been on a trial run since May 2019 near the mouth of the Cengkareng drain, which connects the city’s notoriously garbage-laden Angke River to the Java Sea.

Jakarta’s prototype is the first generation of a device that TOC aims to deploy in 1,000 of the world’s most polluted rivers in just five years. The organisation estimates these waterways are responsible for carrying 80 percent of ocean trash out to sea, with the remaining 20 percent of marine trash coming from around 30,000 other rivers.

Donors from all over the world have invested millions of dollars in TOC to help the organisation accomplish what it says are “ambitious” and “novel” solutions to the scourge of oceangoing trash. But the process has not been smooth. Mongabay visited the prototype in Jakarta in February and found issues with the device. Now, TOC is facing allegations that it copied the design of another successful river cleanup device patented more than a decade ago.

Read the full article about cleaning polluted rivers by  Rachel Meyer and Basten Gokkon at Eco-Business.