The Town of Oakville with Silver Salmon Challenge is installing two Seabins at Bronte Outer Harbour. These machines filter out harmful plastics and microplastics that ruin water quality and kill wildlife from the world's oceans and lakes.
A Seabin is essentially a filter and garbage bin. It is used to clean large bodies of water and restore the water's health. There are currently 860 Seabins in use around the world. A total of 1,870,480 kilograms of waste has been captured, with an average of 3612.8 kilograms of debris being captured daily from using Seabins. Seabins catch tens of thousands of trash units, most of which are plastic.
Silver Salmon Challenge is a not-for-profit organization that focuses on creating challenges for people who fish for a living. The challenge is to capture the biggest weighing fish. This year’s event will be held virtually and will require contestants to take a polygraph to ensure total honesty about their fish weight.
The Seabin works similarly to a food strainer. It strains liquids and captures solids. The filtration process consists of water passing through a superfine mesh bag that captures trash. As the bags fill, staff remove them, and the lake is cleaner.
Silver Salmon Challenge manages the campaign and the bins. Town staff will daily clean out the Seabins daily. They will document garbage accumulation by photos and weight for the University of Toronto's Data Trapper Application, which tracks the Great Lakes Clean-Up Project.
For more information, visit https://silversalmonchallenge.com/seabin and https://seabinproject.com.