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A combination of aerial and water-based drones are helping clean up rivers and canals.

There was a time when you only found drones in military operations and for hobby enthusiasts, but the huge drop in prices has proven to be an attraction for significant innovations.

One such innovative idea has come from Denmark, where a combination of aerial and water-based drones are helping clean up rivers and canals.

Kinetica is a Danish startup company that came up with the concept.

Essentially, the aerial drones will search for signs of pollution in water and then send location data to the sailing drones to gather up the trash. The great thing is that this can be a completely hands-off approach requiring very little monitoring by humans.

Fast Company has an interesting article that highlights some background information on this startup.

“Kinetica also worked with the nonprofit San Francisco Estuary Institute to test another project that uses drones to track how much waste is entering waterways to help understand how well waste-prevention efforts are working.”

While this is a small initial project, it’s the scalability of it that has eco-protection agencies most enthusiastic about it. 


Chris is one of GreenCitizen’s writers who has been a long-time advocate of individual responsibility when it comes to the environment. He shares GreenCitizen's passion for making the world a better place every day of the year.

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