WaterWheel cleans the harbor
This solar powered WaterWheel removes tons of plastic bottles, cups and cigarette butts from Baltimore’s Inner Harbor
This beautiful WaterWheel cleans the harbor of Baltimore.
The harbor was polluted with toxines and tonnes of waste like plastics.
But that will change. By 2020, the water will be clean, fresh and healthy.
Plastic soup
it’s like the plastic coup. Instead of the plastics concentrating in the ocean, millions of gallons of sewage, hundreds of tons of trash, and stormwater runoff are polluting the harbor and bay streams every year.
These conditions are threatening the lives of the birds, river otters and fish. Even a simple contact with the water can be dangerous for people as well due to the threat of waterborne diseases.
WaterWheel
The WaterWheel is called ‘Mr. Trash Wheel’ – a pollution-sucking waterwheel that will transform the harbor front into a swimmable and fishable paradise in a mere four years, according to baltimorewaterfront.com.
Mr. Trash Wheel is collecting the garbage that falls from the hands of Marylanders into rain-swept streets that carry trash downstream and eventually ends up in the Baltimore Harbour and Chesapeake Bay.
Since the harbor is fed by the Jones Falls Watershed, which drains fifty-eight square miles of land, garbage collected by Mr. Trash Wheel could come from anywhere in the Jones Falls Watershed area. The result is a stinking mess where up to 38,000 lbs. of trash can be excavated from the harbor on any given weekday.
Solar powered
The WaterWheel is powered by the harbor’s current, and has a solar panel roof for backup.
The wheel churns the passing trash into a dumpster, which is filled, then emptied into a boat and hauled off to an incinerator (to generate electricity), and is replaced by a new, empty dumpster.
Since 2014, Mr. Trash Wheel is on the job and has done fantastic work for this city captured millions of tons of garbage.
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