Lazio Region catches floating plastic on Rome's river before it enters the sea.

An experimental barrier to catch plastic waste has been installed by the Lazio Region across the river Tiber near the coastal town of Fiumicino south-west of Rome.

The plastic-catching device intercepts floating plastic waste before it reaches the sea, accumulating the trash in a specific area where it is then collected by boat.

The system will be in place for two months and the plan is to recycle the retrieved plastic into benches and traffic dividers for Fiumicino town.

Since the initiative was introduced on 18 October it has already caught about four cubic meters of plastic trash.

The system, which has already been tested on the river Po in northern Italy, is based on the different buoyancy of materials, catching man-made waste but allowing natural debris, such as wood or reeds, to continue towards the sea.

The move follows a recent study which revealed that 90 per cent of the plastic entering the oceans come from just 10 rivers: two in Africa - the Nile and the Niger, and eight in Asia: the Indus, Ganges, Amur, Mekong, Pearl, Hai he, Yellow and Yangtze.