"Guided by floating barriers, the Interceptor has already stopped more than 143,000lbs of rubbish from entering the Pacific from one LA river"

"On an overcast June morning, I step from the rubber-sided Zodiac boat on to a floating barge at the mouth of Ballona Creek, where it meets Santa Monica Bay on the west side of Los Angeles. The first thing I notice? Salty air is the only smell, despite six giant waste bins sitting atop the tennis court-sized barge.

The contraption is actually two barges – a smaller platform sits nestled inside the larger boat. A floating barrier directs rubbish into the device, where a conveyor belt scoops it up. An automated shuttle then distributes the waste into six dumpsters on a separate barge, sending an alert to crews when it is full. Above, solar panels form the ceiling and a conveyor belt runs slowly, dropping bits of plastic and waste into each of the bins. The whole thing can hold about 20,000lbs (9,070kg) of rubbish – the same as one fully loaded lorry.

Since it is the dry season in LA there is not much waste being washed down the river by rainfall. But I still see what the problems are: polystyrene takeaway containers, noodle cups, bottle caps, a yellow pencil, a palm frond dotted with colourful pieces of microplastics. They are all caught up in the boat’s conveyor belt. It’s a pretty representative sample, says James Patterson, the operations manager with the nonprofit Ocean Cleanup, which created the system. “You get a wide variety of basic plastics – a lot of bottles, cups, to-go containers, things from restaurants. That’s typically what we see out here,” he says."

Katharine Gammon reports for the Guardian June 12, 2026. [2]