The disruptors

Drones that clean the oceans

OUT THERE IN deep dark ocean is a 269 000-ton floating mass of waste plastic. An estimated 5,25 trillion pieces of man-made material is choking the life out of the marine ecosystem and it needs to be dealt with. But how best to approach this mammoth task has been the biggest problem. Richard Hardiman (yes, the same guy from radio and MC gigs not too long ago) has an answer and it starts in the harbour, before the waste gets out to open water. Oh, it’s also a drone.

“Drones are a lot more fun and it gives an opportunity to upskill people. You could be a man with a pool net doing this job, but you’re not and can take those skills somewhere else. And the job satisfaction is higher, especially in this country,” Hardiman tells Popular Mechanics at the Wasteshark demonstration at the V&A Waterfront.

The demo forms part of the Ocean Summit held at the Cape Town leg of the 2017 Volvo Ocean Race. His company Ranmarine technology has been trialling the prototype craft at the Port of Rotterdam for most of 2017 and is finally ready to go to market. The V&A Waterfront is based at South Africa’s oldest working harbour and has, in 2017, recycled 2 500 tons of waste and diverted over 6 300 tons from landfill. Of that, 81 tons was directly from the waterways and 24 per cent was plastic.

“Modern problems like plastic waste in our oceans require modern solutions and technology can offer this to humans. We are now able to bring the Wasteshark back home, as it were, thanks to the dedication of the V&A Waterfront and their sustainability values,” says Hardiman. “We are now actively looking to launch the product in South Africa, and are talking to key local and national government entities to execute this.”

The Wasteshark machine is powered for up to eight hours by rechargeable marine batteries, and is equipped with sensors to feed back the water quality, weather and depth of the harbour basin to authorities. GIO mapping ensures the drones don’t get in the way of shipping traffic and they are able to reverse should they collide with anything in the water.

The next phase of development is full autonomy that will see a fleet of Wastesharks manning a harbour and communicating with each other. In addition to the Netherlands, the technology is being tested in Sweden, India, the United Arab Emirates, the United States and Australia. A study by the University of Georgia recently showed that South Africa ranked among the worst culprits for ocean pollution in the world. In the list of 20 countries that generated the highest volumes of “mismanaged plastic waste”, South Africa was ranked number 11 – worse than India, the entire United States and 23 European countries. The worst offenders were China and other Eastern nations.