Plastic Fischer, a social enterprise working to reduce plastic waste in rivers before it pollutes our oceans, has spoken about how using Siemens Xcelerator portfolio is helping develop its barriers for cleaning up waterways.
Founded in 2019 by three friends after witnessing the plastic pollution in the Mekong River in Vietnam, Plastic Fischer is now internationally recognised and is expanding their operations across India and Indonesia. Its innovative hardware, the TrashBoom, is a locally built, low-tech and low-cost modular, floating barrier, that stops plastic in rivers.
Once collected, the waste is brought to Plastic Fischer’s material recovery facilities where it is separated into recyclable and non-recyclable materials by their full-time employees. Recyclable materials such as glass, aluminum, PET and HDPE are sold and reintroduced into the supply chain while non-recyclable materials are brought to certified, co-processing plants where the plastic is incinerated and supplements the use of coal. Using this type of material as an energy source is in line with international best practices.
“Our mission is to develop simple technologies to stop ocean plastic effectively and efficiently when it is already in rivers,” said Plastic Fischer CTO Aviel Itzhak. “Our TrashBoom systems can be built in the location of intended operation by local people. Avoiding imports allows us to implement fast and saves time, money and carbon.”
Itzhak explains that the combination of Solid Edge and cloud-based collaboration enabled with Teamcenter Share gives the team its engineering capabilities, scalability and ability to move its operations to the next stage of development. Solid Edge enables the team to both customise existing designs and develop innovative solutions for the problems it encounters in the field, says Itzhak.
With a globally distributed team, the Xcelerator solution enables the team to work on the same projects simultaneously and have better coordination during design changes that are required to meet local capabilities.
“We are thrilled to see how Plastic Fischer is taking advantage of the Siemens Xcelerator portfolio to not only design and engineer the next generation of its innovative technology, but to also support global collaboration with its geographically dispersed teams to manufacture its TrashBoom system, using local resources,” said Eryn Devola, head of sustainability for Siemens Digital Industries.
“It’s another great example of how our technology is helping pioneers fight climate change issues. We are proud of the work that our customers are doing to address some of the world’s most pressing challenges.”
