Latest news with #rivercleanup
CTV News
12 hours ago
- General
- CTV News
Water lovers join forces to clean up Seine River
A group in Winnipeg is working to remove garbage and other hazards from the Seine River. CTV's Harrison Shin has their story. A group in Winnipeg is working to remove garbage and other hazards from the Seine River. CTV's Harrison Shin has their story. If you take a paddle down the Seine River, you might come across more than just Mother Nature. Garbage and other hazards are clogging up some portions of the urban waterway. 'As the river level fluctuates this year, exceptionally low water levels in the spring, some of the foreign material, like concrete and steel, are exposed,' said David Danyluk, an event organizer for Société Historique Métisse. That debris causes harm to the boats travelling down the river, he explained, which can lead to thousands of dollars in repairs. '[The debris] is not what you'd expect to have boats exposed to, and the damage can be pretty severe for thin-skinned boats like fiberglass or cedar strip canoes,' he said. In June, Société Historique Métisse threw a paddle event at the river, with Mayor Scott Gillingham as one of the dignitaries in attendance. Paddlers at the event raised the issue to the mayor, informing him of the garbage and hazards in the Seine River. 'The mayor approached us after [the event] and said, 'I'd like to keep up to date on what's happening and what we could do to assist,'' Danyluk said. Now, Danyluk and other rivers lovers are asking for volunteers to help identify the locations of foreign debris in the river. 'We reached out through Facebook, through the paddle community, Kayak Manitoba, Seine River Paddlers, and Paddle Manitoba, to see if any volunteers could help identify these locations and then come back with either hand tools or bigger equipment,' he said. Danyluk explained the debris is due to the history of the Seine River. 'It was more like a drainage system. So, all of that ancient rubble, it needs to be cleaned enough so that it is safe for paddling,' he said. 'It will be nice to bring people here and show a cleaner river without any of that foreign debris, and to not have [people] worry about their boats being harmed or damaged.'
Forbes
15 hours ago
- Business
- Forbes
How Sungai Design Is Turning River Plastic Into Beautiful Designs
What do you do when you've pulled over 7 million pounds of plastic out of rivers — and no one wants it? That was the unexpected dilemma facing Sam Bencheghib and his siblings, co-founders of Sungai Watch, a nonprofit dedicated to cleaning Indonesia's waterways. What began as a single trash barrier in a river near their parents' home in Bali has since grown into a national movement, with over 300 rivers cleaned daily, a team of 165 full-time staff, and an ever-growing mountain of plastic waste in need of a second life. It wasn't the first time the Bencheghibs had taken action into their own hands. Growing up in Bali, they spent weekends organizing beach cleanups as teenagers — their first response to the plastic pollution washing ashore each rainy season. That early activism planted the seed for everything that followed: from building a media company to highlight environmental issues, to kayaking down the world's most polluted river in boats made from plastic bottles to raise awareness. But collecting trash is only half the battle. The next challenge? Figuring out what to do with it. In 2024, the siblings launched Sungai Design — a for-profit social enterprise that transforms hard-to-recycle plastic into beautifully designed products. Their mission is simple but ambitious: reduce river pollution by building a circular system where trash is recovered, cleaned, reprocessed, and remade into something useful and desirable. The company's first product, the Ombak Chair, is made from 2,000 plastic bags — the most common type of waste Sungai Watch collects. 'We had over 5 million pounds of trash sitting in our warehouses that nobody wanted to take,' Bencheghib explained. Sungai Design emerged as a direct response — and a creative one. When the chair launched in March 2024, it sparked global interest. A video showing the transformation from river plastic to sculptural furniture went viral, amassing 198 million views and driving over 600,000 visits to their website in a matter of weeks. More than 10,000 people added the chair to their carts. But there was a catch. At the time, they didn't have an online payment system in place — nor the production capacity to meet demand. 'We could only make four chairs a week,' said Bencheghib. 'It took us over a year to fulfill the first wave of orders.' Since then, they've scaled up. The Ombak Chair is now available as a flat-pack version, reducing shipping costs and expanding accessibility. The price has dropped by 30%, and customers now assemble the chair themselves — IKEA-style. Sungai Design has also expanded its product line to include hospitality-grade items like tissue boxes, trays, and coasters — all made from plastic bags and other river waste. And they're just getting started. 'We're only tapping into one of the 30 materials we collect,' Bencheghib said. His team is now experimenting with recycling glass into ceramics, shredding fabric waste, and developing prototypes for phone cases — all made from river trash. They call it 'modern day mining': turning yesterday's discarded packaging into tomorrow's raw material. What sets Sungai Design apart isn't just its design sensibility — it's the end-to-end control of its supply chain. The same organization that pulls plastic from the river also sorts, washes, recycles, designs, and manufactures the final product. That transparency gives every object a traceable origin and a powerful story. It also fuels something bigger. By scanning and recording barcodes on every piece of waste collected, Sungai Watch has built a database of more than 2.5 million items — helping identify the most polluting brands and working with governments to push for policy change. Sungai Design doesn't just recycle; it reinforces advocacy and systemic reform. Now in its angel round, the company is raising $5 million to expand production, logistics, and team capacity. But Bencheghib is clear: this isn't a Silicon Valley-style rocketship — it's a long-term investment in infrastructure, innovation, and impact. Sungai Design is proving that the future of environmental action won't be won by cleanup alone — it will be built, piece by piece, by businesses that turn problems into products, and impact into infrastructure. What started as a river barrier in Bali is now a blueprint for global change — one chair, one story, one recycled plastic bag at a time.
CBS News
05-08-2025
- General
- CBS News
Living Lands & Waters' floating classroom docks in St. Paul, offering free workshops
A nonprofit river clean-up and conservation organization that has been traveling the Mississippi River has now parked its classroom barge in St. Paul, Minnesota. It looks like just a normal barge parked on the Mississippi River, but then you step inside and you walk into a floating classroom. It's where high school students and young adults can attend free river workshops. The Living Lands & Waters nonprofit has a fleet of three barges that travel U.S. rivers and remove garbage. They also work to educate young people on the various career opportunities rivers like the mighty Mississippi have to offer. "It's everything from tow boat captain to a deckhand, to a fishery biologist to an artwork person, water quality tester or maybe even a paddle guide," Rachel Loomis, Mississippi River Institute manager and educator, said. "We're showcasing to these young adults. We are not telling you who to be, but we are giving you all your options that are brought to you by the mighty Mississippi River." The free educational workshops are offered from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday through Friday, throughout the fall. For more details about the workshop, click here.
BBC News
09-06-2025
- General
- BBC News
Shrewsbury litter-pickers clean up River Severn on paddleboards
Volunteers on paddleboards, kayaks, and canoes have cleared dozens of bags of rubbish from the River Severn in 30 took part and their haul included traffic cones, car tyres, plastic chairs and lots of fishing clean up on Sunday was organised by Shrewsbury Vegans and their co-founder Chris Houlston said: "The paddleboards meant we could grab the rubbish that's often inaccessible from the riverbank."He is a regular paddleboarder and said he saw "lots of rubbish" appearing in the river around the town centre. The rubbish is then washed downstream and he said it was having "a really disastrous impact on the Severn, especially all the plastic".The day was arranged as part of Paddle UK's nationwide Big Paddle Clean Up and the group said it planned to do another later in the year. Follow BBC Shropshire on BBC Sounds, Facebook, X and Instagram.
BBC News
01-06-2025
- General
- BBC News
More than 60 bags of litter fished from River Soar
Volunteers say they fished out more than 60 bags of litter from a mile-long section of the River Soar in the space of a of the items recovered included a mattress, a safe and a religious clean-up involved 100 people on kayaks, canoes and paddleboards removing the waste as part of a national effort to clear rivers of plastic and rubbish. The litter picks were carried out by people from local groups and businesses along one mile (1.6km) of the river either side of Leicester Outdoor Pursuits Centre in Belgrave. The groups paddled along the river equipped with litter pickers, gloves and waste bags to remove the floating rubbish, as well as objects stuck in the Leicester Outdoor Pursuits Centre teamed up with Paddle UK - previously named British Canoeing - for the 2025 Big Paddle Cleanup from 24 May and through the half-term week as part of a national effort to clear litter from UK rivers. Parents and children had been encouraged to take to the water during the school holidays as part of the clean-up of the volunteers was 10-year old Ada who says it is not difficult to find a bin rather than throw rubbish in the river."We even found whole bags full of rubbish in there. It was easier to pick them out, but it isn't nice because people should just put it in the bin, it's not that hard."Meanwhile, Arya, also aged 10, says she felt sad lifting a statue of The Virgin Mary from the river during her clear up."Someone just discarded it, it wasn't nice to see as it means a lot to people," she said. Damaging to wildlife Hayley Smitham Hopewell, education and development manager at the pursuits centre, says the volunteers have found some unsettling things in the river in their recent clean up."Unfortunately, we found a dog, which meant we had to call the RSPCA, which was very sad. We also find mattresses, safes filled with valuables, gold and even a motorbike."She also says more than 1,000 bags of rubbish have been recovered from the river since she joined the facility, indicating that despite their efforts, the problem still persists."I understand that people want to use the river as a sanctuary by throwing flowers in etc," she added."But some of the things we find are bits of jewellery, photo frames or ornaments, which is really damaging to the wildlife and to the children who come here." Sue Willis, engagement co-ordinator for the Canal and River Trust visited the site during the week to understand the scale of the problem."It's quite surprising how bad it is, what you see on the surface is the wrappers and crisp packets but beneath the surface is lots of plastic bags and even big pieces of iron - things that aren't visible to the eye unless you go out on the boats."
