By Oscar Huerta, Oct. 24, 2023
The Los Angeles County Ballona Creek Trash Interceptor collected over 85 tons of trash from the Ballona Creek since its deployment October 2022, according to the latest data from L.A. County, catching the attention of sustainability-minded students and faculty at CPP.
Interested in the project’s developments, Cal Poly Pomona students and experts discussed the positive and negative implications of this project for L.A. County and the future of their ocean cleanup efforts.
Rey Reynaldo, publicity chair for the CPP California Water Environment Association – American Water Works Association and civil engineering student, praised The Ocean Cleanup for helping L.A. County reach its goal by engineering the new project to appropriately solve the trash issue.
“Looking at the efforts that the Ocean Cleanup is making toward engineering designs and implementing them internationally is inspiring,” Reynaldo said. “I feel that this accomplishment deserves to be recognized, and it serves to inspire our youth to help support this cause.”
Prior to the partnership, L.A. County Public Works received a high priority request from its Board of Supervisors in 2019 to address the large amounts of trash that flowed through Ballona Creek, an open channel running through the western L.A. basin and emptying at Santa Monica Bay, due to tidal changes and storms. Upon noticing this, the nonprofit organization The Ocean Cleanup offered The Interceptor 007 to L.A. County to advance the mutual goal of removing trash from important river systems flowing to the ocean.
The Interceptor 007 provided notable results during the 2022-2023 storm season, according to data from L.A. County, with little over 77 tons of trash removed and 2,040 pounds of plastic recycled during 14 offload cycles from October to May. Most recently, the interceptor caught over 16,000 pounds of trash after Tropical Storm Hilary in August.
According to an article by the Los Angeles Times, beaches nearby the interceptor also saw a 75% decrease in trash, according to an analysis by the L.A. County Department of Beaches and Harbors maintenance crews.
Mechanical engineering student Addie Hasson said she felt this was an important positive impact from the project when considering the ill effects microplastics have on beach and ocean ecosystems.
Hasson also said while she thinks the interceptor project was a great idea, she worries it will divert attention away from the heart of the issue of plastic production by shifting the blame for plastic pollution on consumers rather than producers.
“An extremely important part of the solution to the plastic pollution problem is not just collecting litter but reducing and eventually eliminating the production of non-biodegradable plastics,” Hasson said. “This project is definitely a step in the right direction, but it’s reactive rather than proactive. We need to be proactive.”
Biological sciences Assistant Professor Andrea Bonisoli Alquati agreed with Hasson, mentioning while the project has done a good job in curving the ocean trash pollution issue, the solution to the overall problem requires more complex behavioral and societal corrections on how trash is managed not just on an individual level, but to the corporate level as well.
“The solution is obviously not just about catching the trash, however important that is, but also having less input, less littering, less use of disposable materials to begin with,” said Alquati. “A lot of the debris that we see is packaging, and companies banish it from their packaging of their products. The emphasis shouldn’t be on consumers that already paid for the packaging to also pay through their taxes for the cleanup, but rather on those companies to pay for pollution or develop solutions that are not as impactful.”
According to L.A. County’s FAQ page on the project’s website, the pilot project is primarily meant to be seen as a “proof-of-concept” that will help provide information on how to proceed with future endeavors on trash cleanup in L.A. County, with discussion for future plans being dependent on the project’s performance.
As the interceptor prepares for another storm season before the end of its pilot period, CPP Sustainability Coordinator Monika Kamboures said she looks forward to seeing future developments from this project and hopes to see a positive shift for environmental sustainability efforts in that area.
“I like to think that when you learn about things like this, it inspires people to be more sustainable with their day-to-day lives,” Kamboures said. “I’m hoping that’s the impact, that over time maybe there will be less going into the ocean or things being left at the beach because people know that these technologies are working to get that back and they’re educated about it.”
Feature Image Courtesy of Los Angeles County
