Coastal Microplastic Extraction

The ask

Deploy tractor-towed vacuum-sifter rigs on Cox's Bazar and other Bangladeshi coastal beaches to mechanically extract microplastic particles from sand, restoring ecological function and generating saleable recovered material.

Why now

Microplastic contamination in beach sand is now a documented public-health and fisheries issue — WHO flagged it as a priority contaminant in 2022. Mechanical beach-cleaning technology borrowed from golf-course and resort maintenance has matured; adapting it for fine-particle microplastic separation using density-differential water wash is an engineering challenge that is now tractable at SME capital levels. Several pilots in the EU and Southeast Asia have published recovery rates sufficient to justify commercial operation.

Why Bangladesh

Cox's Bazar (120 km, the world's longest natural sea beach) is heavily contaminated from upstream river plastic — studies cite 200–900 particles per kg of sand in affected zones. Bangladesh's blue-economy tourism push and BIWTA coastal-development spending make municipalities potential paying customers. The recovered plastic is predominantly PE/PP and is saleable as recycling feedstock at ৳15–30/kg, partially offsetting operating cost.

As a business

Primary revenue is municipal contracts for beach-maintenance services (paid per kilometre per month); secondary revenue is sale of recovered plastic to recyclers and, once volumes are audited, plastic-removal credits to corporates. The rig fleet can be financed under equipment leasing; operating cost is primarily fuel and two-person crew per rig. Scaling from one pilot beach to three or four municipalities takes the model to profitability.

Economics

Move the sliders to model your own coastal microplastic service. Defaults are order-of-magnitude estimates — pressure-testing them is part of what a founder pitches us.

What ZEPH would back

An engineering team that has built and tested a working prototype rig in Bangladeshi coastal conditions and has a letter of intent from at least one municipality. The technology risk is low; the commercial risk is whether local government will pay — a signed pilot contract de-risks the whole investment thesis.

Impact

Extracting microplastics from Cox's Bazar at a density of 80 kg/km/month across 15 km contracts recovers ~14.4 tonnes/year of plastic before it fragments further — preventing accumulation in the fish and shellfish that feed ~30 million coastal Bangladeshis. Each tonne recovered avoids ~3.5 tCO₂e of virgin plastic production, contributing ~50 tCO₂e/year of emissions avoidance while generating saleable feedstock. A mechanised service covering the world's longest natural sea beach creates a replicable model for South Asia's heavily plastic-contaminated coastlines, where tourism income depends on beach quality that manual cleanup alone cannot sustain.