By Associated Press and Adry Torres For Dailymail.com
Published: 20:33 EDT, 8 June 2022 | Updated: 12:58 EDT, 9 June 2022
A Dutch non-profit group, The Ocean Cleanup, has spent three years installing a steel-mesh fence across a heavily polluted river in Guatemala in hopes of stopping plastics and other trash from reaching the ocean.
Located in the municipality of Chinautla, outside Guatemala City, the Las Vacas River is filled with mounds of garbage deposited by fluctuating river currents.
Once the rainy season starts, all of it is swept downstream into the Motagua River before spilling into the Caribbean Sea.
Except now the trash is being stopped by a device the group calls the Interceptor Trashfence.
Metal fence posts stretch across the river bed and the screen is anchored to the river banks.
The device caught so much trash that one part appeared to have buckled.
'What we are trying to do is help clean up,' said Boyan Slat, director of Ocean Cleanup, noting that 'we have never seen plastics pollution like this.'
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Boyan Slat (right), director of The Ocean Cleanup, a non-profit group that is leading efforts to clean up the Motagua River, a waterway in outside Guatemala City, Guatemala, that contributes an estimate of 2 percent of global emissions into oceans as a result of the garbage that flows into the Caribbean Sea
View of plastic bottles on the banks of the polluted Las Vacas River in the Guatemalan municipality of Chinautla on Wednesday. A Dutch non-profit group has installed a metal fence to catch thousands of tons of plastic trash and stop of it from spilling into the Motagua River before it can reach the Caribbean Sea
Indigenous women collect wood on the shore of Las Vacas River in Chinautla, Guatemala, on Wednesday. It is considered one of the most polluted rivers in the world
Engineers stand near the Trashfence, a barrier installed in the Las Vacas River by Dutch non-profit group, The Ocean Cleanup
Slat believes the Las Vacas River carries about 20,000 tons of trash annually.
Based on the estimation, the river is responsible for 2 percent 'of global emissions into oceans.' By comparison, airplanes across the world contribute to 1.9 percent of the planet's CO2 emissions.
'Our estimates suggest that stopping the flow of plastic in this one river could have a proportionally similar reductive impact on plastic emissions as the elimination of all air travel would have on carbon emissions,' Slat said in a statement on The Ocean Cleanup's website last week.
View of the polluted waters of Las Vacas River, in Chinautla, Guatemala, on Wednesday. The Dutch non-profit group, The Ocean Cleanup, seeks to trap thousands of tons of plastic that each year flow into the Caribbean Sea generated from the capital of Guatemala by the Las Vacas River, a tributary of the extensive Motagua River
View of garbage on the banks of the polluted Las Vacas River, in Chinautla, Guatemala, on Wednesday
A pile of plastic bottles rest on the shore of the Las Vacas River, in Chinautla, Guatemala, on Wednesday
The non-profit's research team has spent several years analyzing other polluted rivers across the world that register high amounts of carbon emissions, but none come close to the Motagua River basin.
The Motagua River drew global awareness when in 2017 after images of islands of trash and a scuba diver went for a swim in the plastic-filled waterway went rival.
Ocean Cleanup dispatched a team to Guatemala in 2018 and since then has been working on how to solve the Motagua River's dire situation.
A woman walks over Las Vacas River bridge in Chinautla, on the outskirts of Guatemala City, on Wednesday. Dutch non-profit group, The Ocean Cleanup, is currently piloting a trash collection device in one of the world's most polluted rivers, where unique seasonal challenges include huge quantities of waste and massive water pressure during the rainy season
Plastic bottles and waste float pollute the Las Vacas river in Chinautla, on the outskirts of Guatemala City, on Wednesday
Aerial view of plastic bottles and waste strewn across the Las Vacas river in Chinautla, Guatemala, on Wednesday
The Trashfence was set up in May. It is 164 feet wide across the rocky stream and is 26 feet tall. The steel mesh has a height of almost 10 feet
The Trashfence is 164 feet wide across the rocky stream and is 26 feet tall. The steel mesh has a height of almost 10 feet.
'We expect to spend some time optimizing the exact setup (foundation, mesh sizes, fence height), while investigating whether one deployment is enough to stop these trash tsunamis or whether another Trashfence is needed,' Ocean Cleanup said.
'We continue to evaluate variables such as fence height, mesh size, and foundation security during this pilot period in Guatemala.'
The trash has sparked complaints in Honduras, on whose shores much of the plastic winds up.
I didn't read one word why people who live there a...
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