Inside the Interceptor...

We were happy that we were able to register for a tour of the Maritime Museum Harbor. Luckily for me and Jimmy, both Sally and John are fluent in Dutch and could act as our translators. What an incredible bonus that the tour guide opened the door to the Interceptor and let us walk around it on our own. Here is the conveyor belt, which continuously extracts debris from the water and delivers the waste to the shuttle.

The shuttle automatically distributes the debris across six dumpsters situated on a barge, filling them equally until they are full.

When it is almost full, it automatically sends a text message to the local operators to come and collect the waste. They remove the barge, bring it to the side of the river, empty the dumpsters, send off the debris to local waste management facilities, and return the barge back into the Interceptor.

The Ocean Cleanup, a Dutch non-profit, hopes to deploy 1,000 Interceptors in the heaviest polluting rivers by 2025; it is estimated that just 1% of the rivers account for 80% of the plastic pollution. The first two Interceptors systems are already operating in Indonesia, Malaysia and the Dominican Republic. Later this year they hope to deploy in Thailand, Honduras and Los Angeles.

We were all impressed and thrilled to have seen the Interceptor up close.