A Plastic Sea in the Seine River
Millions of polypropylene widgets used to attract bacteria in wastewater treatment plants are drifting along in the Seine after being dumped by either the Essonne Intercommunal Union for Sanitation and River Restoration (1) or its subcontractors.
The Norwegian inventor describes the technology as “a 3-room apartment with a kitchen where bacteria can live comfortably and eat pollutants in wastewater.” The technology, described in France as Radical Flow Fluidized Filter (R3F), is considered easy and economical to operate. The lifespan of the “biomedias” (2) is 20 to 25 years. They are used in Bordeaux, Mulhouse and upstream of Paris, to name a few locations. These bacteria niches can amount to 19 million units per 100 m3 of water. Operators have obviously released them in large numbers into the natural environment.
