There is a growing issue with the amount of plastic on beaches. All around the world this is becoming a huge danger to sea life. The beaches are covered with bottles, containers and with nurdles (virgin plastic). This is either consumed by land animals or it just ends back in the ocean. This all gets their either during production and shipping, or when people carelessly throw them out. Because of the constant demand for plastic, this problem will only grow.

In collaboration with social enterprise Microplastix, students from Propeller Industries, Project STEM class, Sustainability Club, and teachers like Ms Strentz we first tested the Trommel at Cottesloe beach!

But what is this Trommel?

A Trommel is a large rotating cylinder made from a mesh. This means when it is spun the sand comes out and the plastic remains inside. The plastic then falls out a shoot to be collected. There are some images below;

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How it is constructed

Some of the L joins and circular bushing where 3d printed at the College and The legs and internal beams of the Trommel are made from 100% recycled plastic. They were also made at the College using the Precious Plastics machines such as the shredder and extruder.

How it preformed

We tested it on the last day of Term 3 and I was shocked by just how bad the issue is. There was so much plastic you could even pick some up just from the ground. You could only imagine the amount of plastic that might’ve flown off to sea or underneath the layers of sand. After sifting through it the sand appeared much cleaner. I would say that it is very labor intensive but does it’s job.

Improvements

The first improvement most people immediately think is MOTOR. However, it is more complicated then that. This Trommel was designed to help a group of people whom are using large sieves to sort sand. Also motor need power and batteries are very expensive. This is also made to help those who are in developing countries, and they might not have access to motors and batteries (Neverminded electricity). Two massive improvement that need to be done is;

1. Make sure that the Trommel can sift wet sand. Whilst I know that will be very hard for the engineers, the wet sand clogged up the gaps in the mesh and stops it from preforming to higher standards. An idea we had on the beach was to have a row of brushes that brushed against the out side of the cylinder.
2. Find a way to separate the plastic, from the metal, from the seaweed. The Trommel just collects everything bigger then sand so loads of seaweed is also collected. This makes it harder to actually use the plastic/metal we find. We need to think of a way to separate them from each other. (Magnetic waves for steal and reverse magnetic waves for aluminum, fans/wind for seaweed/floating in water).

Overall I enjoyed the day out and they Trommel worked great! This is a video of a Trommel in action by people from the UKPosted – Not us :).