Activists try giant screen to clean up Guatemalan river

GUATEMALA CITY (AP) — The non-profit group Ocean Cleanup has installed a huge, steel-mesh screen on a heavily polluted river outside Guatemala City, in a bid to stop plastics and other debris before they reach the ocean. The Las Vacas river is strewn with mounds of trash deposited by fluctuating river currents. As the rainy season starts, all of it could be swept down stream, if it weren’t for a device the group calls an Interceptor Trashfence. Looking something like a big cyclone metal fence stretching across the river bed, the screen is anchored to the river banks. On Wednesday, the device caught so much trash that one part buckled.