City firm develops low-cost water body clean up installation; emerges winner in clean water body challenge

BENGALURU: City based private firm AlphaMERS Ltd. has developed a Floating Trash Barrier (FTB), which has led them to win the ‘Cleaning and Restoring India’s Water Bodies Challenge’ conducted by the Office of the Principal Scientific Advisor (PSA) to the Government of India. The Waste to Wealth Mission- Swachh Bharat Unnat Bharat Mission under the Office of the PSA conducted the challenge from November 27, 2020 to February 17, 2021.

The FTB’s performance was evaluated by a jury comprising of experts and was selected as one of the winners of the challenge. The panel highlighted that the FTB could address the environmental issue of floating solid waste pollution in the water bodies.

An efficient model, the FTB uses natural flow of the water to bring trash to the riverbank where it is deployed and from there the trash is removed manually. Designed as a floating barrier, it can withstand monsoon river flow.

It works entirely on natural flow and it is an extremely low-cost installation.  The FTB was first installed in the Cooum River in Chennai and has now been deployed in seven other cities- Bengaluru, Puducherry, Mysuru, Tuticorin, Hyderabad, Thanjavur, and Coimbatore.