Top 5 Litter Cleanup Technologies
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We got ourselves into this mess, can we get ourselves out of it?
The amount of waste produced on our planet daily is unfathomable. New York City alone disposes of 12,000 tonnes of household trash every single day. Considering the amount humans throw away, first-world countries generally have efficient and effective waste removal, but it’s not perfect. Tonnes of waste end up in the environment every year, polluting our land and water. Debris from construction, storms, and windy recycling days is scattered around accidentally with illegal dumping adding to the mess.
Keeping waste out of the environment is essential for many reasons. For one, our health relies on it. Many of us obtain our drinking water from local freshwater sources that are increasingly being polluted. It is now well known that microplastics are contaminating our soil, air, and water and we are just beginning to understand the consequences of that. Our economy is also impacted by waste, not only because litter in the environment is ugly and not good for tourism, but also because taxpayers pay billions of dollars annually for waste cleanup and disposal. We also have to think about the wildlife that gets trapped in debris or ingests it.
The good news is that there are people around the world trying to solve this problem. In the last decade, there has been a lot of innovation in environmental cleanup, and these environmental technologies keep getting better. Here are some of the top new technologies being used today:
The biggest concern with all of these technologies is that they are quite costly making them inaccessible to most. The research and development that goes into building effective technology take time and money and that cost gets pushed forward into the purchase price. Over time we will see the cost of these technologies decrease, and hopefully see the efficiency continue to increase and see what the future tech will bring.
The number of people working to solve the problem of misplaced waste continues to grow, which means there will be better solutions coming to fruition in the future. There is hope that one day waste in the environment will be a thing of the past. All of the inventions above demonstrate how much promise lies ahead in solving this problem. So how can you help? The number one thing you can do to help is to decrease your waste. Every action matters especially when we work on a problem like this collectively.