University of Limerick Detects Beach Plastic Hotspots

Researchers at the University of Limerick have developed a drone-based computer-vision platform to map plastic pollution on coastlines, testing hundreds of flights across Irish beaches and pilots in nine countries during recent field trials. The open-source system detects items as small as 1cm from 30 metres, provides GPS coordinates via a free mobile app, and has helped community groups target clean-ups and inform local waste-management decisions.