How innovative tech is helping clean up our microplastic issue

New products like aquatic Roombas aim to tackle pollution in water systems

- MATHEW INGRAM

In Toronto's Outer Harbour Marina, remotecontrolled WasteShark drones putter about, vacuuming up debris from Lake Ontario.

Last summer, a pair of odd vessels could be found patrolling Toronto’s Outer Harbour Marina. They weren’t boats, however. More like supersized aquatic Roomba vacuum cleaners, these autonomous drones were specially designed to suck up trash floating in the water. PortsToronto launched the two drones (named Ebb and Flow courtesy of a crowdsourced campaign) as part of an effort to clean up the harbour and prevent plastic detritus from clogging our waterways.

Each WasteShark, which has the capacity to remove the equivalent of nearly 500 kilograms of waste from the water in a day, can be operated either autonomously or via remote control. “I’ve driven one,” says Jessica Pellerin, media relations officer for PortsToronto. “Once you get the hang of it, it’s pretty user friendly. It’s a little like playing a video game.” In just three outings last summer, she notes, the drones collected more than 19.1 kilograms of trash.

Although Ebb and Flow are just part of a small pilot project, they’re aiming to tackle a massive problem: all the discarded plastic in our waterways. It is estimated that more than 10,000 tons of primarily plastic waste from the U.S. and Canada wind up in the Great Lakes every year. And that’s just the tip of the (polymer) iceberg: According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources, our oceans accumulate more than 14 million tons of plastic annually. The United Nations estimates that the amount of plastic entering aquatic ecosystems could exceed 25 million tonnes per year by 2040.