Mr. Trash Wheel and Professor Trash Wheel sound like characters on a children’s program, but they are solar- and hydro-powered trash interceptors cleaning up Baltimore’s Harbor. As cute as they are effective, Mr. Trash Wheel and Professor Trash Wheel have the ability to suck up plastic bags, Styrofoam containers, cigarette butts, and other debris. Mr. Trash Wheel, uses solar panels and the river’s current to turn a waterwheel, which then activates a conveyor belt. The trash, which gets pulled in by floating containment booms, gets tangled and lifted by rotating forks before going up the conveyor belt and being deposited into the dumpster. Once the dumpster is full, it gets towed to a transit station. Most of the debris they pick up comes from illegal dumping, trash chucked from cars, and cigarette butts stubbed out on the ground as opposed to from people directly littering into the river itself, but the flow of the area’s watershed eventually brings the trash into the wheels.