Sharjah24 – Reuters: The Ocean Cleanup organisation installed a trash fence on Las Vacas River outside Guatemala City to block plastics and other rubbish from reaching the ocean.

Geographic and municipal factors cause 20,000 tonnes of plastic to flow across the Rio Motagua each year, and the river alone accounts for 2% of worldwide plastic pollution into the seas.

The Guatemala project, called Interceptor Trashfence is still in an experimental stage and not yet functioning; however, the Ocean Cleanup team is working to make the system fully operational to start intercepting plastic as part of their goal to clean up the 1000 most polluted rivers in the world.

The Rio Motagua runs from Guatemala's highlands to the Caribbean Sea. A landfill rests on top of one of Rio Motagua's tributaries, the Rio Las Vacas suffers from unlawful rubbish dumping like other rivers in the region.

The Ocean Cleanup team has investigated hundreds of the world's heaviest-emitting rivers, but they have never seen anything like the amount of plastic pollution found in the Rio Motagua basin.

According to the research conducted by the organisation and satellite imagery gathered it is believed that the Rio Motagua is one of the world's most polluted rivers.