Beach cleaner

A beach cleaner is a vehicle that drags a sifting device over beach sand to remove rubbish and other foreign matter. Smaller beach cleaners are either manually hand-drawn or pulled by quad-bike or tractor. Seaside cities use beach cleaning machines to combat the problems of litter left by beach patrons and other pollution washed up on their shores. A chief task in beach cleaning strategies is finding the best way to handle waste matter on the beaches, taking into consideration beach erosion and changing terrain. [ [http://ci.san-clemente.ca.us/sc/Org/CityNews/Newsletter/Download/020-%20Fall%202005%20Newsletter.pdf "City Acquires New Beach Cleaning Machine"] , "News From City Hall-- San Clemente", Fall, 2005. ] Beach cleaning machines work by collecting sand by way of a scoop or drag mechanism and then sifting anything large enough to be considered foreign matter, including sticks, stones, rubbish, syringes and other items.

Areas of operation

On the Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia, four beach cleaner tractors operate 365 days a year. The machines start at midnight and sweep the entire mainland coast (36km). Each night the strandline is removed from every beach for the entire 36km of the mainland. Areas where there are flags for swimming are swept from the waterline to the duneline every single morning. Other parts of the upper recreational beach are swept between the duneline and waterline between once a week and once a month depending on the popularity of that beach area. The beach cleaner is a cone-shaped sieve that picks up 150 millimeters of the sand surface and removes debris down to cigarette sized impurities. The sieves are pulled by 100 horsepower tractors. The machines remove 31 tonnes of debris from beaches in an average week. These beaches receive ten million visitors each year. The beach cleaning tractors also have a program to sweep sandy beaches along the Gold Coast's tidal waterways and the Gold Coast Broadwater.

ee also

*Marine debris
*Waste collector (Trash collector)

References