{"id":125575,"date":"2021-07-27T21:23:13","date_gmt":"2021-07-28T04:23:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2021\/07\/this-little-robot-is-cleaning-up-our-beaches-one-cigarette-butt-at-a-time"},"modified":"2021-07-27T21:23:13","modified_gmt":"2021-07-28T04:23:13","slug":"this-little-robot-is-cleaning-up-our-beaches-one-cigarette-butt-at-a-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2021\/07\/this-little-robot-is-cleaning-up-our-beaches-one-cigarette-butt-at-a-time","title":{"rendered":"This little robot is cleaning up our beaches, one cigarette butt at a time"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/this-little-robot-is-cleaning-up-our-beaches-one-cigarette-butt-at-a-time.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Cigarette butts are a common type of litter for marine environments but AI-powered robot litter pickers could be the solution.<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>It seems many people leave behind more than just sandcastles when they go home after a trip to the beach. Beach litter is a recurring issue, and it is damaging our coastal environments and wildlife.<\/p>\n<p>And there is one small item that is causing a big problem: cigarette butts. They may only be a few centimetres long, but they are full of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/pmc\/articles\/PMC7849351\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">microplastics and toxic chemicals<\/a> that harm the marine environment. They don\u2019t easily decompose, and when they come into contact with the water, harmful substances can leach out.<\/p>\n<p>Unfortunately, they are also the <a href=\"https:\/\/journals.plos.org\/plosone\/article?id=10.1371\/journal.pone.0117393\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">most common type of litter<\/a>, with an estimated 4.5 trillion discarded annually.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Cigarette butts are a common type of litter for marine environments but AI-powered robot litter pickers could be the solution. It seems many people leave behind more than just sandcastles when they go home after a trip to the beach. Beach litter is a recurring issue, and it is damaging our coastal environments and wildlife. [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":359,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-125575","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chemistry","category-robotics-ai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125575","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/359"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=125575"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125575\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=125575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=125575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=125575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}