Mr. Trash Wheel, officially called the Inner Harbor Water Wheel, is a

trash interceptor A trash interceptor is a device in a river to collect and remove floating debris – before the debris flows out into a harbor, for instance. Mr. Trash Wheel Installed in May 2014, the water wheel trash interceptor known as Mr. Trash Wheel, o ...

, a vessel that removes trash from the

Jones Falls The Jones Falls is a U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map , accessed April 1, 2011 stream in Maryland. It is impounded to create Lake Roland before running through the city of Baltim ...

river as it empties into the

Inner Harbor The Inner Harbor is a historic seaport, tourist attraction, and landmark of the city of Baltimore, Maryland. It was described by the Urban Land Institute in 2009 as "the model for post-industrial waterfront redevelopment around the world". The ...

Baltimore Baltimore ( , locally: or ) is the List of municipalities in Maryland, most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland, fourth most populous city in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, and List of United States cities by popula ...

, Maryland. It is powered by

water wheels A water wheel is a machine for converting the energy of flowing or falling water into useful forms of power, often in a watermill. A water wheel consists of a wheel (usually constructed from wood or metal), with a number of blades or buckets ...

and

solar cells A solar cell, or photovoltaic cell, is an electronic device that converts the energy of light directly into electricity by the photovoltaic effect, which is a physics, physical and Chemical substance, chemical phenomenon.

Overview

Mr. Trash Wheel is a moored vessel that removes trash from the mouth of the Jones Falls river at Baltimore's

. Rubbish from the streets of Baltimore is flushed into storm drains that empty into the Jones Falls river. The floating rubbish is then carried by the river to its outlet into the Inner Harbor, where it is captured by Mr. Trash Wheel. Mr. Trash Wheel is powered by the

current Currents, Current or The Current may refer to: Science and technology * Current (fluid), the flow of a liquid or a gas ** Air current, a flow of air ** Ocean current, a current in the ocean *** Rip current, a kind of water current ** Current (stre ...

from the river, and backup power is provided by

solar panel A solar cell panel, solar electric panel, photo-voltaic (PV) module, PV panel or solar panel is an assembly of photovoltaic solar cells mounted in a (usually rectangular) frame, and a neatly organised collection of PV panels is called a photo ...

s when the current is sluggish. These power a conveyor belt. Mr. Trash Wheel removes floating debris using rotating forks that dip into and out of the water, and which then place the trash onto a conveyor belt which moves it into a dumpster. The water wheel can be controlled remotely on the Internet. Mr. Trash Wheel was constructed using $720,000 of public and private funding.

History

Mr. Trash Wheel was invented by John Kellett, who developed the idea when observing trash in the harbor while passing Pier 6 on his walk to work. A pilot trash wheel was built and launched in the harbor by Kellett in 2008, and after this, Kellett built a larger machine that was launched in May 2014, which was able to pick up larger matter and held two dumpsters onboard. The use of two dumpsters allows the vessel to operate longer, without having to go back to shore to empty the single dumpster that was used on the initial pilot vessel. On April 20, 2015, after the first significant rain storm of the season, Mr. Trash Wheel removed 19 tons of garbage from Baltimore's waterfront on that one day. The previous record for debris removal occurred on May 16, 2014, when the machine removed 11 tons of refuse on that day. At the end of the third quarter in 2016, (which occurred on September 30, 2016), it was noted that Mr. Trash Wheel had collected over of trash since its inception. Mr. Trash Wheel is part of the Waterfront Partnership of Baltimore's "Healthy Harbor Plan", which has a goal to clean up the harbor to the point of making it swimmable by the year 2020. In 2015, the Waterfront Partnership of Baltimore began fundraising efforts to construct a second water wheel like Mr. Trash Wheel for use "off the Boston Street Pier Park" at the Harris Creek outfall in Canton, Baltimore. This second trash wheel has been given the nickname "Professor Trash Wheel." Adam Lindquist, director of the Healthy Harbor Initiative, approached What Works Studio to leverage the popularity of a video of the device in 2015. What Works Studio Creative Strategist Justin Allen was immediately struck with the organic look of the device and suggested personifying it with

googly eyes Googly eyes, or wiggle eyes, are small plastic crafting items used to imitate eyeballs. Googly eyes traditionally are composed of a white plastic or card backing covered by a clear, hard-plastic shell, encapsulating a black plastic disk. The comb ...

and giving it a name. Several names were suggested by the What Works Studio staff but Mr. Trash Wheel is the one that stuck. What Works Studio suggested using Twitter as its primary channel for communication where it started gaining a following under the management of multiple What Works Studio staff. At this point, the googly eyes only existed on images of the trash wheel. The first set of physical eyes, which Lindquist had handmade in his spare time, were removed after a brief period. In March 2016, Key Tech, a Baltimore-based technology solutions company donated a more robust pair of permanent eyes.

Additional instances

Several additional trash wheels have been produced after the success of the original. Four patrol the Inner Harbor and there are plans for one on the

West Coast West Coast or west coast may refer to: Geography Australia * Western Australia *Regions of South Australia#Weather forecasting, West Coast of South Australia * West Coast, Tasmania **West Coast Range, mountain range in the region Canada * Britis ...

and one in

Central America Central America ( es, América Central or ) is a subregion of the Americas. Its boundaries are defined as bordering the United States to the north, Colombia to the south, the Caribbean Sea to the east, and the Pacific Ocean to the west. ...

. Working with Kellett,

Panamanian Panamanians (Spanish: ''Panameños'') are people identified with Panama, a transcontinental country in Central America (a region within North America) and South America, whose connection may be residential, legal, historical, or cultural. For mo ...

officials were able to secure a grant to place a trash wheel in

Panama City Panama City ( es, Ciudad de Panamá, links=no; ), also known as Panama (or Panamá in Spanish), is the capital and largest city of Panama. It has an urban population of 880,691, with over 1.5 million in its metropolitan area. The city is locat ...

. Like Mr. Trash Wheel, the others deployed so far have also been

anthropomorphised Anthropomorphism is the attribution of human traits, emotions, or intentions to non-human entities. It is considered to be an innate tendency of human psychology. Personification is the related attribution of human form and characteristics t ...

: * the Canton-based, female-gendered Professor Trash Wheel, visually distinguishable from the other instances due to her green googly eyes with lashes, was commissioned in December 2016; * the gender-neutral Captain Trash Wheel without lashes but with brown irises in June 2018 at

Brooklyn Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...

. *Another female-gendered wheel at the mouth of the

Gwynns Falls Gwynns Falls is a U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map accessed April 1, 2011. stream located in Baltimore County, Maryland, Baltimore County and Baltimore, Baltimore City, Maryland. It ...

named Gwynnda the Good Wheel of the West. Gwynnda has the same lashes as Professor Trash Wheel but with purple eyes. The largest of the four wheels, Gwynnda picks up more trash and debris than the other three wheels combined.

References

External links

{{Commons category, Inner Harbor Water Wheel
Mr. Trash Wheel

Trash Wheel Project
Waterfront Partnership of Baltimore.
Mr. Trash Wheel Twitter site

Healthy Harbor Baltimore
Baltimore Environment of Maryland Service vessels of the United States Waste management in the United States Water pollution in the United States 2014 ships

History

Additional instances

References

Further reading

External links