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Overview

Every year as summer approaches, enormous crowds swarm the world’s beaches, leaving behind millions of tons of trash. While existing solutions, such as human volunteers and robotic technologies, have been implemented, they remain largely inefficient as they only remove trash on the surface of the beach. However, most beach trash is actually buried beneath the sand and continues to accumulate hidden from sight, posing a serious environmental issue.

Beach Cleaner Pro is a novel device designed to combat this issue and assist humans in more efficient beach clean-up. As Beach Cleaner Pro is pushed along the beach, a mixture of sand and trash enters the intake hood. Then, a powerful screw picks up and moves the mixture along a tube. Numerous holes at the bottom of the tube filter out the sand, while a plastic bag attached to the end of the tube collects the sand-free trash for easy disposal.

Literature Search

Plastic makes up the majority of beach trash, accounting for about 38.1% [1]. In addition, a lot of that plastic gets broken into pieces smaller than a dime, making them hard to detect and pick up.

Approximately 8 million tons of plastic alone is left on the beach every year, causing a multitude of environmental issues, ranging from wildlife endangerment to water contamination [4]. In fact, plastic has been found in 25% of fish, 59% of sea birds, and 100% of sea turtles [2].

87% of beach trash is within 10 cm of the surface, but existing solutions miss most of that trash as it is not visible [3].

[1] Beach cleanups. Surfrider Foundation. (n.d.). Retrieved May 10, 2022, from https://cleanups.surfrider.org/results/

[2] Fighting for Trash Free Seas. Ocean Conservancy. (n.d.) Retrieved May 10, 2022, from https://oceanconservancy.org/trash-free-seas/

[3] Kungskulniti, N., Charoenca, N., Hamann, S., Pitayarangsarit, S., & Mock, J. (2018). Cigarette Waste in popular beaches in Thailand: High densities that demand environmental action. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 15(4), 630. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph15040630

[4] Parker, L. (2021, May 3). Plastic pollution facts and information. Environment. Retrieved May 10, 2022, from https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/plastic-pollution