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Posts Tagged ‘debris’

Bicyclists Can Fight Back

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on May 29, 2024| 4 Comments »

Photo: FoxLocal via the New York Post.
The Atlanta Magnet Man has a system for saving bikers from flat tires.

Multitasking Americans like to do more than one thing while exercising. Some people listen to podcasts on their walk. Some turn the elliptical toward the TV. I try to do breathing and meditaion on the treadmill.

Now, here’s a guy who picks up bike-damaging metal while exercising. Cathy Free has the story at the Washington Post.

“Alex Benigno was sick of changing his flat tires. He was getting them all the time … on his bike tires when he biked after work. ‘I’m really good at getting flat tires, and I was tired of patching them all the time,’ he said.

“He looked into it and learned that metal road litter is a nationwide problem, often caused by nails or other sharp objects spilled from trucks, and sometimes even done deliberately. In the United States, a vehicle tire is punctured every seven seconds, causing 220 million flat tires a year, according to a report by Autoily.

“Benigno decided to do something about it. … About a year ago, he bought 10 strong magnets for $160 online, attached them to the underbelly of his bike trailer, then went for a ride through Atlanta late one afternoon to see how many nails, screws, bottle caps, flattened cans and pieces of metal wire he could attract. Benigno rides a stand-up bike because of his back surgery 12 years ago.

“During his first 10-mile trip with the magnets attached, the underside of the trailer picked up about six pounds of sharp metal bits.

“ ‘From there, I decided to keep going out after work every day, added more magnets and tried all kinds of configurations with them to get to where I was collecting even more,’ he said.

“He attached a broom to the trailer to help sweep more metal into the magnets, and he selected different areas of the city to ride through each time.

“By December, he said he was picking up about 50 pounds of debris every 10 days, scraping it off the bottom of the trailer each night and storing it in bins in his car and home or at the photo supply shop where he works.

“When he started an Instagram page in January to alert people to the problem of metal debris in the streets, Benigno called himself the ‘Atlanta Magnet Man.’ His videos and posts quickly built a following, and Georgia Public Broadcasting shared the story of his street cleanup efforts.

“People immediately began to post thank you messages, sharing their own stories of flat tires.

“ ‘Midtown is the worst,’ wrote one person. ‘I have had a couple of flat tires in recent years with all the construction.’ …

“Benigno posted one of his cycling videos on YouTube last month to give people a better idea of how much debris his magnets pick up.

“When Laura Lewis, an Atlanta scrap metal artist, found out what he was doing, she offered to take the mess he’d collected off his hands.

“ ‘I gave her the whole batch — 410 pounds worth,’ Benigno said. ‘I love that she can do something with it.’

“Lewis said she’d been looking for some smaller metal pieces to add more detail to her sculptures. …

” ‘They send out street sweepers to clean the streets, but they really can’t catch all the small bits,’ Benigno said. ‘Because some of these things are so little, they’re flipped around by the sweeper, and when someone runs over them, there goes another flat tire.’ “

I love that an artist can use Benigno’s trash. It’s amazing what certain people find a use for, but you’re lucky if you find them. We once replaced a copper roof, and a copper sculptor was thrilled to get free material for her work.

More at the Post, here.

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“Ghost Nets” in the Ocean

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on June 30, 2020| 4 Comments »

There are so many things going on right now that sometimes it’s hard to remember that crises like global warming and plastic pollution are no less urgent just because illness and job losses are center stage.

Fortunately, all this time we’ve been counting Covid-19 deaths, a few people have been working on the problems that will still be around when the pandemic has ended.

On June 19, Doug Struck reported at the Christian Science Monitor about one woman working to clean up the ocean.

“Nothing pleases Mary Crowley more than to see a huge, dripping, bedraggled fishing net, ensnarled with plastic garbage, being lifted from the sea. That is progress, she says.

“Ms. Crowley, a sailor since childhood days spent in her grandfather’s wooden sailboat on Lake Michigan, has been working for more than a decade to clean up the world’s oceans. She started by urging fishermen to pick up floating plastic. Now her million-dollar effort employs drones, satellites, floating GPS buoys, sophisticated oceanographic models, a corps of yachtsmen, and an oceangoing cargo ship.

“The Kwai, a 140-foot, two-masted cargo sailing vessel that normally shuttles supplies among Pacific islands, has been plucking nets and trash from the Pacific for the past six weeks. It is expected to return to Hawaii around June 23 with 100 tons of debris, the first of what Ms. Crowley hopes will be two such voyages this summer; she is hoping to dispatch the ship for a second voyage in July.

Much of that trash will be ‘ghost nets,’ fishing nets abandoned or lost that float freely, ensnarling fish, marine life, trash, and passing vessels.

“The Kwai’s crew of 11, sailors accustomed to unloading anything from cars to concrete on isolated islands, uses winches and sweat to hoist the heavy nets from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, where swirling currents gather floating debris.

“The term is misleading; the area is huge and the debris is spread out. But the Kwai is led to wayward nets in part by GPS buoys that yachtsmen and other sailors, volunteers for Ms. Crowley, have stopped mid-ocean to attach to trash.

“ ‘This work feels great,’ Capt. Brad Ives replies mid-voyage from the Kwai by email. ‘When the weather is good and the nets are flowing, there is no better work for a fine old sailing ship. Crew spirits are high and we are cleaning our Mother Ocean.’ …

“Ms. Crowley began her project as a labor of love for the sea. She runs a yacht chartering business from Sausalito, California. But her clients consistently confirmed her own observations that the ocean seems increasingly cluttered with plastic debris. …

“Every year, an estimated 8 million tons of plastic is washed from the lands and is threatening to choke the seas. The United Nations has warned that by 2050 there will be more plastic than fish in the sea. Marine mammals are routinely found dead, their bodies clogged with plastics. Microplastics – the result of deteriorating larger pieces or small manufactured beads – are now thoroughly infused in the marine food chain. …

“There are many creative ideas to clean the ocean, and Ms. Crowley supports them all. She formed Ocean Voyages Institute in 1979 to educate audiences about the sea. Over time she gathered a ‘think tank’ of sailors, naval architects, marine engineers, and fishermen. ‘We decided that one of the most harmful things going on in the ocean is the huge proliferation of large plastics,’ she says. ‘This includes derelict fishing gear, and boats and piers and car fenders.’ …

“ ‘There is debris practically every day inside the gyre,’ Captain Ives writes from the ship. … ‘The most difficult are always the big nets. … These require divers in the water to get cargo slings around them and often several lifts to get them wrestled aboard. A large net can take several hours to wrestle aboard.’ …

“Ms. Crowley has recruited a cadre of volunteers with a gentle inexhaustibility.

“ ‘As someone who loves the ocean and has had the pleasure and honor of spending lots of time in the ocean,’ she says, ‘it’s my responsibility to not have the health of our ocean held hostage by plastic garbage.’ ”

More at the Christian Science Monitor, here.

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