Tracking Hong Kong’s litter trail all the way to Taiwan
WWF deploys GPS signallers to find out where objects go after ending up in city drains, and calls for action on marine rubbish problem
Up to 40 per cent of litter dropped on Hong Kong’s streets may end up polluting the city’s waters or being washed ashore as far away as Taiwan, a study involving floating balls with GPS trackers dropped in drains has suggested.
Global conservation group WWF used 100 of the GPS devices to track the trash in the city’s storm drains and rivers. And its researchers called on the public and the government to curb street-level littering and manage drains better to cut it off at source.
The study, part of a project which got almost HK$1.5 million from the government’s Environmental and Conservation Fund, used floating balls similar in shape and size to goose eggs.
The waterproof, wax-coated drifters each carried a 3G mobile SIM card, and sent signals to pinpoint their location every seven minutes to an hour. Researchers have used those signals to track and map the balls’ voyages since dunking them into storm drains and rivers at 10 places around Hong Kong from June to late July this year.
After three weeks, about 20 per cent of the trash simulators from storm drains and 40 per cent from rivers were found to have ended up in open seas after zigzagging or swirling around the city.