Autonomous Boats Gobble Up Floating Plastic

A Hong Kong-based startup has developed uncrewed catamarans capable of consuming floating waste, hoping its vessels could curb plastic pollution in the planet’s waterways.

“We have garbage trucks for the land. Why don’t we have something to clean the water?” asks Sidhant Gupta, the co-founder of the marine-tech startup Clearbot, which developed the boat. “You should be able to see these in the harbors and think ‘whatevs’ because it’s so normal. We want to be ubiquitous.”

According to the US nonprofit Oceana, an estimated 15 billion kilograms of plastic trash enters the oceans yearly, primarily via rivers and coastlines. Clearbot is operating about a dozen vessels – three-meter-long, autonomous, solar-powered boats that can gobble up 80 kilograms of waste per hour and carry 200 kilograms on board and four-meter-long boats that can collect 200 kilograms an hour, carrying a load of 1.5 metric tons – for different government bodies and corporate clients in Hong Kong, India, and Thailand. The boats can be guided remotely through an online dashboard or set to run autonomously. Looking to scale up, Clearbot hopes to deploy 20 vessels by March 2025 and 50 within two years.