Official

There was an interesting-shaped ship floating on the Sumida River. If you look closely, it seems that there is a belt conveyor at the end of the ship. This is a river cleaning boat called a conveyor ship. The total length is about 15 meters, and the width of the ship is about 4 meters.
Garbage is collected by the front belt conveyor moving forward while the ship moves around. The garbage collected from the river accumulates in the center of the ship.

There are several types of cleaning boats, and it seems that they are used properly according to the size of the river.
The cleaning boat I met today is a boat that cleans relatively large rivers such as the Sumida River and the Nihonbashi River. When entering a thin river such as the Tsukiji River, a "hand-crafted boat" is active. Workers scoop up garbage by hand using nets.

Every day, 30 representative rivers in Tokyo are cleaned.
The garbage collected in each river is collected in the Umaya Bridge and Shiomi branches, where it is transferred to a large ship with a backhoe behind called a "garbage carrier". Then it is carried to the central breakwater. At the central breakwater, garbage goes up to land for the first time and sorts such as recycling.
It seems that the amount of garbage collected per day is about 1 ton! It seems that after a typhoon, it can reach 10 tons.
The main items collected are plants, dead fish, and garbage discarded by people.
In urban areas such as the Nihonbashi River and the Kanda River, there seems to be a lot of garbage from lunch boxes at convenience stores. We also want to keep the river clean by observing manners.

In addition to the cleaning boats introduced this time, there are many boats that are active in the river. What kind of ship can you meet next? Everyone, please look for it!

Correspondent Minato kid, Chuo-ku Tourism Association

No. 50 April 26, 2019