The drift of plastic waste followed by satellite for cleaner oceans
AFP • 04 / 12 / 2020
Tons of plastic waste from the streets of Jakarta are washed away by the rains at sea and sometimes float to the beaches of Bali or to the Indian Ocean. Thanks to satellite beacons, scientists are studying this drift to collect them more efficiently.
With a population of nearly 270 million inhabitants, Indonesia is the second largest contributor in the world, behind China, to these piles of plastics that pollute the oceans.
If the priority is to reduce the use of plastic and the volumes carried by the rivers in the archipelago, the challenge is immense, and these efforts are likely to take more years. In the meantime, a team of researchers wants to better understand how this waste is disseminated and how to better collect it.
Argos satellite beacons have been deployed since February at the mouths of rivers in Jakarta, near Bandung (central Java) and Palembang (Sumatra) by the French company CLS, a subsidiary of CNES (Center National d'Etudes Spatiales), for a project of the Indonesian Ministry of Maritime Affairs and Fisheries.
Ery Ragaputra, a CLS employee, left by boat at the end of October where the Cisadane River flows into the Java Sea near the Indonesian capital.
"Today we are launching GPS beacons to discover the route of plastic debris arriving at sea," he told AFP, throwing the yellow beacons into the water wrapped in waterproof protection.
- Drifts lasting several months -
The beacons, equipped with batteries with an autonomy of one year, emit a signal every hour to a satellite, which is retransmitted to a data processing center in Toulouse, France, where CLS is located, then hits ministry screens in Jakarta.
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