Maryland’s Baltimore Harbor used to have a trash problem. Not anymore. Three googly-eyed machines that spin in the water’s current scoop up trash before it can flow into the ocean.
The devices even have names: Mr. Trash Wheel, Professor Trash Wheel, and Captain Trash Wheel. They’ve been so effective that Milwaukee, New York City, and Toronto might get similar machines to help clean their waterways.
The Healthy Harbor Initiative, which oversees the wheels, attached googly eyes to Mr. Trash Wheel as a Halloween decoration in 2015. John Kellett, the trash wheels’ inventor, worried that people wouldn’t take the machine seriously. But people wanted to keep the eyes, and now Kellett thinks they’re great.
“It inspires young people to become part of the solution,” he says.