Australian innovation bringing awareness and action to marine plastic pollution
By Staff Writer
California’s plastic pollution problem is snowballing — but so is public awareness and action. This week Aussie surfer, entrepreneur and clean ocean advocate Pete Ceglinski is coming to Los Angeles to install and educate the public on Seabins, a device Pete co-founded to reduce, and ultimately eliminate pollution in our oceans. Each Seabin acts as a trash can for our waters, with the ability to catch up to 90,000 plastic bags and 11,900 plastic bottles, per year. To date, Seabins have been installed in over 40 countries, resulting in a total of 1.95 tons of waste extracted from our oceans every day.
Pete Ceglinski dreamed up the Seabin to do something about the ever-growing issue of marine pollution. With little to no experience in inventing, marketing, or engineering, he successfully crowdfunded his invention in 2015 which went viral, and drew millions of eyes to the environmental disaster that is the state of our oceans.
Seabin x Los Angeles is a part of the Seabin America Tour that runs through June and July, and will result in an estimated 3 tons of marine pollution extracted from Los Angeles waters each year. Throughout the tour Pete and his small family are traveling up the West Coast in a truck full of Seabins and surfboards, with stops in San Diego, Los Angeles, Ventura, and San Francisco.
At each location the public is invited to join Pete and his family for one of the following: Seabin installations, demonstrations, educational presentations, beach clean-ups, and community events.
“Once people see the amount of debris that a single Seabin can pull from a small marina, they understand how much waste ends up in our waterways and instantly reassess the way they dispose of their rubbish,” said Pete. “The Seabins are catching big stuff like plastic bottles, bags, cups and also smaller stuff like plastic nurdles, micro-plastics and just recently micro fibers.”
Join Pete Ceglinski in Marina Del Rey on Thursday, June 20th for a Seabin installation and presentation to see firsthand how Seabins are restoring LA waters:
Date: Thursday, June 20th
Community Presentation: 4 p.m. – 6 p.m.
Location: Marina Harbor Anchorage, Marina Del Rey, CA
