The Life DA-1 will travel the rivers of the UK towards the ocean, gathering vital information of the journey of an inappropriately discarded plastic bottle, the time, speed and conditions it takes to reach the coast and the ocean. The journey will begin in Derbyshire and will last for one year.

Life DA-1 has a GPS Tracker on ‘live mode’ to get location updates every 5 minutes, with historic location history stored on tracking platform for up to 12 months for detailed analysis.

Live mode will allow primary and secondary school students, universities and environmental organizations a constant study and monitoring of the movement, speed and directions of simulated plastic pollution towards the ocean.

The devise will also test technologies to help pave the way for future understanding of plastic pollution dynamics.

There are several ways that the mission will help pave the future of understanding plastic pollution dynamics and demonstrates technologies that may be used in the fight against waterways and ocean pollution. These include currents and speed affecting the movement of debris, development of devises and infrastructure to retrieve the debris from rivers and identifying “hot zones” of debris accumulation.