BY ISABEL EVERETT/LAURA RUMBEL
An underwater rubbish bin could be the key to cleaning up excessive amounts of rubbish in Carrington's water ways.
The Carrington Community Council is hosting a community information session, with tech company 'The Seabin Foundation', to discuss the potential roll out of their 'Seabin' device in Newcastle's water ways.
The Seabin sits underneath the surface sucking in water and rubbish, including microplastics, and filtering out oil, fuel and other surface pollutants with filters installed to prevent animals getting stuck.
20 of the devices are currently placed in Sydney Harbour as part of a 12 month trial.
The Seabin Foundation estimates during the trial 28 tons of microplastics, marine litter and plastic fibres will be removed by filtering 4.3 billion litres of water.
"The seabin is a bit like a water vacuum, and would catch all the rubbish that unfortunately comes down our waterways and through Throsby creek," Council member and Carrington resident Scott Sharpe says.
"When you walk through the board walk in Carrington when the tide is down there is just so much rubbish and plastics. If we could take that away before that gets there it's so much better for the environment."
The Council are hoping for support from the Newcastle Port Community Contribution Fund, and Hunter Water to roll out the devices here.
Hunter Water says they will monitor the results of the Sydney trial.
The information session will be held at Carrington Bowling Club on Sunday the 21st of February at 12:30pm.
Members of the Seabin Foundation will give a demonstration of a working seabin and will be on-hand to discuss the device with the community.
As numbers are limited, those interested are encouraged to RSVP to carringtoncommunitycouncil@gmail.com.
Images: Seabinproject.com
