Meet the BeBot, a machine created to help clean up microplastics on the beach. The robot was a collaboration between 4ocean and Poralu Marine for areas that have relatively clean beaches but large amounts of microplastics.
The BeBot is powered by batteries connected to a solar panel, which makes it quiet as it travels back and forth on a beach. It is also able to cover an area roughly three-fifths the size of a football field each hour! As for its sifting process, the machine sorts through the top layer of sand through a screen, getting any item that is larger than a square centimeter. While it takes a person to sort through the different objects the robot got during its cleanup process, it is much faster than manually looking through each part of the beach.
4ocean is currently testing the robot in some of the most plastic-polluted beaches on the planet in Hawaii. The BeBot is ‘no means a solution for the ocean plastic crisis,’ says Alex Schulze, co-founder and CEO of 4ocean to Fast Company. The company, however, hopes to use the machine ‘to collect that plastic that exists as well as raise awareness to how that plastic is getting on the coastlines and in the ocean.’
Image credit: 4ocean
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