Catching the trash is half the problem. The other half is what you do with it.
The boring answer:
- Recyclables → recycling streams.
- Non-recyclables → landfill.
The more interesting answer:
The recyclables we pull out aren't going to disappear into a generic recycling truck. We want them to come back, visibly, in the same neighborhood. As urban furniture: benches, planters, signage, public infrastructure. Made from the trash of the river that runs through the area.
Why?
Because the deepest goal of this project isn't the interceptor. It's behavior change.
People throw garbage into the river because, in their heads, the river is a place "away." Once it's in the water, it's gone. Out of sight, off their hands, no longer their problem.
A bench made from the river's plastic, sitting in a park near that same river, is the opposite of "away." It's the river's trash, in the most visible possible form, in the most local possible place. It's a hard thing to walk past without it triggering some thinking.
This is also why we're learning from Sungai Watch in Bali. Their real insight isn't the barriers they built — it's that hardware alone doesn't change a culture. Education does. Community does. Visible feedback loops do.
And here's the philosophical kicker:
The honest goal of this project is to make the interceptor unnecessary.
A future where we can pull the structure out of the river — not because it failed, but because it doesn't need to be there anymore. Because the upstream community no longer treats the creek as a garbage chute. Because the kids running the next composting workshop are the same kids whose parents used to throw bags into the water.
That's the real win. The interceptor is just a placeholder until we get there.
Next post: the bigger picture. Three rivers, one bay, and why we called the whole thing Marea.