Design Summary & Reader Response (Analysis) Draft 4

The article “A Little Robot That Cleans the Beach, One Butt at a Time” written by Monica Gonderman(2021), states that an Artificial Intelligence (AI) beach buggy robot named BeachBot, BB for short, has a very distinct goal, which is to clean up cigarette butts after the smokers discard them on the beach. Gonderman claims that the BeachBot “measuring about 2.5 feet wide”, helps to pick “some of the 4.5 trillion cigarette butts”, “10 cigarette butts in 30 minutes”, discarded on the beach with ‘its two gripper arms,’ and storing them into its storage section and unload manually later.

Gonderman states that toxic chemicals and microplastics are dangerous to sea creatures, especially when the "chemicals" leak from the cigarette butt filter. Therefore, to attempt to save the situation, BeachBot creators Edwin Bos and Martijn Lukaart, co-founders of TechTics, “put the project into motion”. Gonderman also mentions that the BeachBot recognizes the cigarette butts by various images only on the sand. The BeachBot is also assisted by other small robots, which will update BeachBot on the whereabouts of the cigarette butts.

Simply, BeachBot rovers will be beneficial towards the environment by picking up toxic cigarette butts around the beach, providing extra ‘manpower’ and keeping beaches clean from unsightly cigarette butts poking out from the sand.

Firstly, BeachBot helps to pickup cigarette butts along the seashore as cigarette butts are the single most littered item in the world with over at least 4.5 trillion every year stated by Monica Goderman(2021). The cigarette butts are small and easy for the aquatic life to eat by accident. Cigarette butts take up to 10 years to degrade as they contain hundreds of toxic chemicals that remain in the environment longer than the cigarette butt itself. The chemicals inside the cigarette include arsenic, lead and nicotine which heavily impacts the natural environment around us. Furthermore, according to a research report by San Diego State University (Slaughter et al., 2011) found that chemicals spewing from cigarette butts are deadly to all aquatic fish species.  Cigarettes butts are very toxic and can accumulate massively if no action has taken, BeachBot will solely focus on cleaning up the beaches free from Cigarette butts.

A second benefit is BeachBot can be on duty cleaning up the beaches whenever there is a shortage of manpower. People may not be available to aid in cleaning up the beaches or even not bother to help at all. BeachBot, however, will follow its commands to clean up the beach whenever there is power in its battery tank or given the order to do so as Monica Goderman stated. Even though BeachBot is currently picking up around “10 cigarette butts in 30 minutes,” which does not seem like a major impact on the environment at first, BeachBot will continue to get improvements and upgrades (Gonderman, 2021).

Thirdly, BeachBot clears out cigarette butts poking out on the sandy beach as this is an unsightly view for visitors and tourists. Nobody likes to see litter on the beach that reminds us how unclean the ocean is now a days, even giving off a negative impression that repels visitors from coming to the cigarette butt filled beaches. In the Reader's Digest Nargi (2021) that the scenery of various beautiful beaches before pollution got the hold of them, enforcing the importance of keeping the beaches clean. This can be minimized with the help of Beachbot cleaning up the beaches.

Unfortunately, the efforts of BeachBot to clean up the beaches is negligible as the damage has already been done. The amount of litter and cigarette butts accumulating over the past 20 years are already way beyond the point of recovery. According to one of the articles of National Geographic by Laura Parker, in 2015 there was an estimated 150 million metric tons of plastic in the sea, with the possibility of having the amount of trash being nearly tripled to 600 million metrics in 2040. With this much-predicted amount of plastic trash, not compared to the number 1 most littered trash to be cigarette butts, how will the BeachBot impact the undeniable future?  To implement a near zero plastic waste in the sea requires new technology, which BeachBot is a part of new way to keep and reduce litter as stated by National Geographic.

In conclusion, having BeachBot on the coastal areas cleaning up cigarette butts is favourable to the environment. Although there is still work in progress with lots of space for improvement. It will take some time for BeachBot to fully be capable to pick up more cigarette butts than its prototype version and when it does, there will be another great helper to aid in maintaining the coastal ecosystem from cigarette butts. 

References

Gonderman, M.(2021, July 23). A Little Robot That Cleans the Beach, One Butt at a Time.
MotorTrend.
https://www.motortrend.com/news/beachbot-ai-robot-techtics-cleans-cigarette-butts-beach/

Slaughter, E. Gersberg, R. M. Watanabe, K. Rudolph, R. Stransky, & C. Novotny, T. E. (2011, November 1). Toxicity of cigarette butts, and their chemical components, to marine and freshwater fish. Tobacco Control.
https://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/20/Suppl_1/i25#block-system-main

Nargi, L.(2021, July 23).What the world’s most polluted beaches used to look like. 

Reader's Digest.

https://www.rd.com/list/worlds-most-polluted-beaches/

Parker, L.(2020, July 24).Plastic trash flowing into the seas will nearly triple by 2040 without drastic action.
National Geographic.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/plastic-trash-in-seas-will-nearly-triple-by-2040-if-nothing-done