Vivien Chen
5/21/22
Pollution is a serious problem on beaches. Many coastlines are littered with plastic bags, cigarette butts, water bottles, and more. This waste can choke seabirds, contaminate the water, and harm marine animals.
People have been looking for solutions for a long time, such as hosting beach clean ups, limiting entry to beaches, and using tractors and other technology. However, these methods aren’t efficient and don’t fully solve the problem. Tractors and other heavy-duty cleaning equipment can miss many small pieces of trash and disrupt the natural environment. One relatively new solution is BeBot, a beach cleaning robot engineered by Poralu Marine.
BeBot is a beach cleaning robot that can sift through the sand on beaches and remove waste without harming the environment. It is eco-friendly, running solely on battery and solar power with no harmful emissions. It is remote controlled and can be operated from up to 300 meters away. The robot can recover trash as small as 1 cm and can clean an area of 3000 meters squared in an hour. Its wheels and tracks allow it to cover many different topographies and go through narrow areas.
In Florida, where beaches are filled with tourists and people looking to cool off from the hot weather, litter is a huge problem. They have turned to BeBot to reduce their waste, and plan to have 30 devices across Florida soon.
BeBot is currently being tested out in Brevard County, Florida, and people have high hopes. According to Bryan Bobbitt, executive director of Keep Brevard Beautiful, the smaller pieces of garbage that BeBot is able to collect is what makes it so game-changing. They have many volunteers that come pick up trash daily, but it is easy to miss smaller pieces of trash. When these small plastics are left out in the sun, they break down into smaller pieces that can get in the water and harm wildlife.
Bobbitt believes that BeBot and similar technologies will expand on beaches as flaws are worked out and they gain popularity. Alongside human work, these robots could be key in the future for keeping our coastlines clean.
Pictures
- https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Water_Pollution_with_Trash_Disposal_of_Waste_at_the_Garbage_Beach.jpg
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Swachh_bot.jpg
Sources
- 4ocean X poralu BeBot. 4ocean. (n.d.). Retrieved May 21, 2022, from https://www.4ocean.com/pages/4ocean-x-poralu-bebot
- Sandoval, E. (2022, April 26). Here’s how Brevard County’s new beach cleaning robot could save lives. WKMG. Retrieved May 21, 2022, from https://www.clickorlando.com/news/investigators/2022/04/22/heres-how-brevard-countys-new-beach-cleaning-robot-could-save-lives/
