A unique Australian invention aimed at reducing marine pollution is set to be made available in up to 17 countries next year, with a prototype undergoing final trials in luxury European marinas.
Best mates and surfers Andrew Turton and Pete Ceglinski came up with the unique ocean-cleaning device, dubbed the “Seabin”, after becoming frustrated at the amount of rubbish floating around.
The Perth pair quit their jobs to find a sustainable solution, eventually designing an automated rubbish bin with a pump for marina docks.
With the help of a successful crowdfunding campaign and willing WA seed investors, and with the Seabin becoming a viral sensation, they took a prototype to market in Mallorca in Spain, a marina capital of Europe, earlier this year.
Mr Ceglinski said there had since been huge interest from cities and corporate companies around the world who had seen a pilot project at La Grande-Motte in France.
“[With] the amount of interest that has been generated, people are crawling hand over foot to have Seabins,” he said.
The Seabin Project has now signed an agreement with a French manufacturer with factories in Europe, US and Australia to distribute the Seabin in as many as 17 countries at the start of next year.
The Australian company is hoping to sell about 1,000 Seabins in the first year of production.
Now based permanently in Mallorca with a team of six staff, Mr Turton and Mr Ceglinski have just completed the final design of the bin.
“We’ve been doing strength testing, rigidity, floatation testing. When we are happy with that, in late September can we start the tooling for the final moulds and products,” Mr Ceglinski said.
“Each version we’ve done has been better, perfecting each one … We have a solar powered 24-volt pump coming next week which we are really excited about.”
Seabins to be trialled at ports within weeks
The team last week came to an agreement with port authorities at Ibiza, Mallorca, Menorca and Formentera for full access to their commercial ports to test the Seabins and solar pumps.
The latest design is due to be trialled at the sites within a few weeks.
“The King of Spain has even granted us access to his yacht club,” Mr Ceglinski said.
“We have a 3,000 litre in-house pool in our factory which we use to iron out all of the bugs. Once we are happy we will go down and put it in a real life situation.”
It is hoped pre-production Seabins will be installed by October at Mallorca and La Grand-Motte for a further test period of two months, before the finished product is released to the market.
Despite the success of the crowdfunding venture in raising more than $300,000, Mr Ceglinski said he had only made $300 from the invention thus far.
“Things are still really tight … We are about halfway through the crowd-funding money. We don’t expect any real money from the pre-sales until November, at the end of year,” he said.
Bins built using recycled ocean waste
The Seabin Project is using plastic collected from the ocean by New York-based environmental group Parley for the Oceans to construct the device.
“We have 20 kilos of plastic being sent to us … we need to get our structural engineers to test this to work out what percentage we can put into the sea bins., but we are hoping for 100 per cent,” Mr Ceglinski said.
Mr Ceglinski said a marine scientist had also been engaged to devise an education program and oversee results.
“We have local schools that want to interact with the project. It’s now a pre-requisite for marinas that want to be an ambassador for the project to partner with a local school or sport club,” he said.
“We are also starting to take water samples to create base data so when we start to put the Seabins in the water in the next week… we can see if we are making a change in the environment.”
Source: ABC
By Laura Gartry
