It's a race against time. The more than eight million tonnes of plastic that end up in the sea every year become more and more dangerous for marine fauna as they break up and are mistaken for food. Almost all Pacific albatrosses now have plastic fragments in their stomachs, which kill more than a million seabirds every year, according to UNEP.

It’s not widely known that nearly 90 per cent of the plastic that ends up in the ocean has been transported there by one of 10 great rivers, the most polluted in the world: Yangtze, Nile, Ganges, Indus, Yellow River, Hai he, the Pearl River, Amur, Niger and Mekong.

Fabio Dalmonte, a 36-year-old born in the Romagna region of Italy came up with the idea of stopping the flow of plastic before it reaches the sea, with a system of barriers that can catch garbage to send to recyclers – and that don’t prevent the passage of boats and fish.