What started out with a small group of Durban surfers wanting to protect their “playground” from pollutants has developed into a large-scale initiative to stop thousands of tonnes of harmful plastics from reaching the ocean.
With 90% of plastic pollution coming from river systems, non-profit organisation The Litterboom Project is using a simple system to arrest the problem and create jobs.
They have already successfully prevented over 300t of plastic from ending up in the sea through their work in rivers in KwaZulu-Natal and the Western Cape.
“We use a large pipe that we anchor across the river, which acts as a catchment for all surface-level plastics,” said Cameron Service, head of The Litterboom Project.
“This preventive measure is set up strategically where it can collect the most rubbish and where our team collect, sort and send the plastic off for recycling.
• 10 - The number of rivers, six in KwaZulu-Natal and four in the Western Cape, serviced by The Litterboom Project
• 1,000kg - The average amount of litter collected per day from project sites
— In Numbers:
“We have found this low-tech innovation to be a great solution, where factors such as cost and theft have to be considered.”
Service said it was initially a project of surfers and paddlers who wanted to deal with “the negative effects that the plastic problem has had on our ‘playground’.”
As a trail developer, Service had spent time working in the greenbelt areas of Durban and surrounds.
“It was through this that I was exposed to the huge issue around waste in rural and informal settlement areas,” he said.
Service and his small team drove the project until it became SA's first large-scale river interception programme.
Unemployed young people are given a chance to earn money through the collection and recycling of the plastics.
Volunteer Musa Majola, a Durban-based supervisor, said the project allows him to support his family.
“Young people are also being given a chance to earn some cash and they are learning about the impact of pollution,” Majola said.
The project has also caught the interest of the University of Cape Town (UCT) and Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, which are conducting interception-device research to see how much pollution moves through rivers and how efficient litterbooms are in collecting it.
Dr Kevin Winter of UCT's environmental and geographic science departments said: “We are reaching a state in which it is no longer possible to restore urban rivers to a state in which they can support biodiversity of plant and animal life.
“Real time observations of litter and its movement in a river is a new way of accelerating public awareness.”
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