Tackling Trash with Giant Googly Eyes: Q&A with Baltimore’s Mr. Trash Wheel | Article

Trash pollution is a problem everywhere—even places as remote as the Arctic or the deepest ocean trench. It can harm wildlife, spread bacteria-borne diseases, and break down into microplastics. The city of Baltimore, Maryland, has a unique solution in the Baltimore Harbor: a giant conveyor belt with five-foot googly eyes named Mr. Trash Wheel. Mr. Trash Wheel is a floating trash interceptor—a device that picks up trash from the waters—powered by the water’s natural currents and solar panels. With over 20,000 followers on Twitter and over 25,000 on Instagram, Mr. Trash Wheel reaches a wide audience in a fun way to raise awareness about trash pollution.

EESI sat down with Adam Lindquist, vice president of programs and environmental initiatives at the Waterfront Partnership of Baltimore, the business improvement district that created and maintains Mr. Trash Wheel, to discuss Mr. Trash Wheel’s success and unique approach to environmental education and awareness.

Mr. Trash Wheel in Baltimore Harbor. Photo Credit: Waterfront Partnership of Baltimore

EESI: Where did the idea for “Mr. Trash Wheel” come from?

Lindquist: Mr. Trash Wheel was created and is operated by the Waterfront Partnership of Baltimore, which is made up of businesses around the Baltimore waterfront. This group of businesses decided not just to do the traditional business improvement services, like maintaining landscaping—they wanted to improve the environment as well. And so, those businesses came together and said, “Let's clean up the harbor.”

In 2010, the Waterfront Partnership started the Healthy Harbor Initiative, which is a campaign to make the harbor safe for recreation. As part of that campaign, we had to find new ideas to clean up the Baltimore Harbor. We installed floating wetlands and created a large-scale oyster gardening program at the Baltimore Harbor, but we also wanted to do something about the trash. Not far away, the Clearwater Mills company had installed a device to remove trash from the water using the natural current of the Jones Falls stream, which flows into Baltimore Harbor. We reached out to Clearwater Mills and said, “Hey, let's get together and find a way to build a much bigger, better, sustainably-powered trash interceptor,” and that became Mr. Trash Wheel in 2014.

EESI: Can you tell us how Mr. Trash Wheel is powered?

Lindquist: Mr. Trash Wheel is powered by both energy from the river current and solar panels. There is not always enough current in the river to power Mr. Trash Wheel, so in order to stay sustainable, we put solar panels on him. The solar panels also charge up the batteries on Mr. Trash Wheel so when he needs some extra speed, we can turn on battery-powered pumps that put more water onto the wheel so it turns faster.

EESI: What is the most common type of trash that Mr. Trash Wheel picks up?

Interior of Mr. Trash Wheel. Photo Credit: Waterfront Partnership of Baltimore

Lindquist: By sheer number of items, it is by far cigarette butts. That statistic does not really surprise me when I think about littering behaviors that you see on a routine basis. You can go outside any day and see people throwing cigarette butts on the ground. It is almost like people have decided that cigarette butts are not as big a deal because they are so small. But we have collected around 13 million of them since 2014, and there are many more that Mr. Trash Wheel does not pick up.

Mr. Trash Wheel also picks up a lot of Styrofoam packaging because it floats really well. He has picked up over a million foam containers since 2014. But in 2018, Maryland became the first state in the country to ban Styrofoam containers statewide. Since then, we have seen over an 80 percent reduction in the amount of Styrofoam pulled out of the harbor.

EESI: How does the Waterfront Partnership define success for Mr. Trash Wheel?

Lindquist: While anybody can build a trash interceptor, one of the major successes of Mr. Trash Wheel is that the Waterfront Partnership decided that it did not want to just collect trash—it wanted to engage the public. We put giant googly eyes onto our trash interceptor and named it Mr. Trash Wheel. In addition to that, Mr. Trash Wheel has a social media persona, where he reaches a broad audience. By sharing all the weird things Mr. Trash Wheel pulls out of the Baltimore Harbor, he is educating folks on the harbor’s trash problem. He also reaches an audience that a traditional anti-littering education campaign might not reach.

EESI: What other advantages have come about because you gave a personality to a trash interceptor?

Lindquist: First of all, Mr. Trash Wheel has a huge following. People have Mr. Trash Wheel tattoos, or dress up as Mr. Trash Wheel for Halloween, and kids ask for Mr. Trash Wheel birthday cakes. It definitely helps raise awareness. Because of this following, we have also been able to sell merchandise to raise money, which helps us operate Mr. Trash Wheel, and our other trash interceptors, Professor Trash Wheel, and Gwynnda the Good Wheel of the West. There have been tangible behavior changes as well. I have had people tell me that they did not recycle before Mr. Trash Wheel came into their lives.

EESI: Is there a bigger overall problem of trash in the harbor? And what is your role in educating the community beyond sharing the trash that Mr. Trash Wheel picks up?

Lindquist: There is a huge problem with trash and litter in the Baltimore Harbor. We have three other trash wheels, but it is not feasible to have trash interceptors pick up all the trash that enters the Harbor. We know we are just treating a symptom of the problem. The bigger problem is the overall way that we handle waste. There is not enough recycling, and composting, especially in Baltimore City. We would love to see a city-wide composting program to help alleviate the waste problem in Baltimore.

Legislation is an important piece of the puzzle. For example, New York state recently banned plastic bags, which accelerates the shift to people using reusable bags. We have a plastic bag ban in Baltimore, but it would be great to expand that to be statewide.

This interview was edited for length and clarity.

Interview by: Emilie Austin