IN THE DRINK

THE CHANGING FACE OF MARINAS

We have litter bins on land, why not have them in the water too? Enter the Seabin. Bryan Stewart from Inland and Coastal Marina Systems explains how this technology is already making a di eren e in waters, in luding marinas and harbours

DID YOU KNOW? Cigarette butts are the most commonly caught item in the 860 Seabins in use across multiple marinas and harbours worldwide.

A newly installed Seabin

It is estimated that eight million tonnes of plastic waste enter the oceans each year. As recreational boaters, we see the effects of this everyday along our shorelines, fl oating out at sea or building up in the corners of our marinas. With 80 per cent of waterborne waste originating from the land, it is an ongoing battle to keep the waters where we play clean and litter free. But help is at hand.

What is a Seabin? The Seabin is an award-winning piece of technology which acts as a fl oating rubbish bin, specifi cally designed to be installed in marinas, yacht clubs and harbours, or any calm body of water with access to electricity.

The Seabin sits in the water and moves up and down with the range of the tide, collecting all fl oating debris. Water is drawn in from the surface and passes through a fi ne mesh catch bag inside the Seabin. The submersible water pump is capable of displacing 25,000 litres per hour and plugs directly into either a 110V or 220V outlet.

Made from recyclable material, a Seabin will catch fl oating litter, such as plastic bottles, crisp packets and sweet wrappers, as well as intercepting microfi bres and microplastics as small as 2mm in diameter.

Easily equipped with oil absorbent pads, the Seabin is also able to absorb petroleum-based surface oils and detergents present in most marinas and harbours around the UK, no matter how careful the operators are.

How well does it perform? A Seabin can catch an estimated 3.9kgs of fl oating debris per day or 1.4 tons per year (depending on weather and debris volumes), but can cost as little as 80p a day to run.

To put this in context, each year a Seabin has the capacity to catch: ■ 90,000 plastic bags ■ 35,700 disposable cups ■ 16,500 plastic bottles ■ 166,500 plastic utensils Funding opportunities The Seabin is an essential tool for collecting waterborne waste and creating cleaner marinas for us to enjoy our boating from.

Funding opportunities exist for marinas, harbours or watersports centres that wish to improve the quality of their immediate environment, but might lack the capital to do so.

Of the many Seabins already installed around the UK and Ireland, approximately 20 per cent have been funded by other businesses or organisations. So, anyone wishing to install a Seabin should seek information about any funding available for environmental initiatives in their area.

To fi nd out more about the Seabin, and how you can get involved in helping to clean up your local marine environment, visit inlandandcoastal. com/product/seabin or contact bryan@ inlandandcoastal.com.

BY PAUL ANTROBUS In the drink With Paul Antrobus

Time to Taste the Difference

e e er e ue t r e beer fl ur br e tere t re u t

The collective growth of market share for small ‘craft’ brewers seems to have slowed to a trickle. Small start-up breweries have succumbed to buy-outs by the mainstream brewers, perhaps as a natural evolution of markets accelerated by the Covid environment.

Also, the big brewers themselves are producing brand extensions with a variety of types and fl avours, like the core offer craft brewers have typically relied on. Brand extensions like Old Golden Hen and Old Hoppy Hen, as siblings of Morland’s long established Old Speckled Hen (Greene King), offer the supermarket consumer taste variety and get themselves more shelf facings to catch the eye of customers shopping for home consumption.

The idea of small production being better than mass production has always sustained localised small ‘boutique’ breweries, but their continued existence seems to be founded mainly on ever more unlikely additions to the mash recipe, such as strawberries and pineapple. To my taste they are not ‘real’ beers, but younger drinkers seem to like them as part of the trend to ever more unlikely combinations.

I fi nd the Morland variations quite effective. Old Golden Hen is self-styled as ‘refreshing craft beer’, 4.1 per cent abv, with a touch of grapefruit in the taste. Old Hoppy Hen is billed as ‘crisp pale ale’ at 4.2 per cent and has a sharp bitterness of hops, which makes it a very suitable summer ale.

Adnams (Suffolk) produce Earl Grey beer. The idea is that tea leaves impart the same fl avour-making extracts that hops do. Muslin bags of Earl Grey tea are introduced at the brewing stage and removed before the fermenting stage, just as you might make a cup of tea. Try putting a tea bag in a beer poured at home and see what you think!

Web site realale.com is an interesting site I found recently. It is a retailing operation with three shops in London specialising in a huge variety of beers, mainly with novelty ingredients and colourful names and graphics. There are too many to include here, but if you have turned to unusual beers to brighten up the enforced drinking at home, it is worth having a look at.

More Spanish oranges The realale.com website also lists a variety of wines including 10 orange wines. Previously in AAS we have explored ‘orange’ wines made in concrete or clay amphora (quevris) and highlighted the lack of information on the labels. Metamorphika Brisat, on realale.com, shows a whole round slice of orange as the dominant visual on the ceramic bottle, plus ‘macabeu orange’, as bold a statement as you can get.

Macabeu (or ‘macabeo’) is a white grape grown mainly in Spain’s Rioja region and regularly used for making Cava. Metamorhpika is made in clay amphora and fermented on the whole grape skins and pips for as much as 10 weeks. The result is described as distinctly tannic with taste notes of apple and lime and other savoury fl avours. It is quite pricey at £27.95 for 75cl, 13 per cent, but there are cheaper ones.

My favourite label is Solara Orange, which has a glorious picture of half the orange slice ‘sunsetting’ over a dark horizon. It is from Romania, which many say was the birthplace of the orange wine genre. £10.75 and evocative of spring and better summers to come!

Old Golden Hen and Old Hoppy Hen are siblings of the long established Old Speckled Hen

Some orange wines are becoming more obvious

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