A sand cleaning machine, beach cleaner, or (colloquially) sandboni is a vehicle that drags a raking or sifting device over beach sand to remove rubbish and other foreign matter. They are manually self-pulled vehicles on tracks or wheels or pulled by quad-bike or tractor. Seaside cities use beach cleaning machines to combat the problems of litter left by beach patrons and other pollution washed up on their shores. A chief task in beach cleaning strategies is finding the best way to handle waste matter on the beaches, taking into consideration beach erosion and changing terrain. Beach cleaning machines work by collecting sand by way of a scoop or drag mechanism and then raking or sifting anything large enough to be considered foreign matter, including sticks, stones, litter and other items.
Similar applications include lake beaches, sandfields for beach volleyball and kindergarten and playing field sandpits. The word "sandboni" is a back-formation referencing the ice-surfacing machine Zamboni. [1]
Sand cleaning machines are used all over the world for the purpose of the safety and happiness of beach-goers. By removing litter, unwanted seaweed, and other debris from the beach, municipalities and resorts are able to maintain their beaches with fewer invested hours.
In addition to their regular litter-removing uses, beach and sand cleaners have been used to clean up after natural disasters. For example:
In Galveston, Texas, low oxygen levels in the water resulted in thousands of dead fish washing ashore. Raking sand cleaners were then used to remove the rotting fish off the beach before they released excessive toxins into the air, sand, and water. [2]
The Olympic Games 2008 saw the first remote-control Sandbonis for the beach volleyball fields in Beijing Chaoyang Park. [3]
The cleanup after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill saw large applications of sand cleaners to the area. [1] Similarly, the Rena oil spill in New Zealand also saw beach cleaners deployed in an effort to remove the affected sand. [4]
The major manufacturers of large beach-sand cleaning machines are considered to be H Barber & Sons, Cherrington, BeachTech, PFG Srl, Tuareg Srl, D'Hooghe machinebouw, ingeniería Flozaga Guterh Sl, Scam, Rockland, Qingzhou Rio, Tirrenia Srl and CleanSands.
There are many other manufacturers of sand cleaners being used for other purposes. For example, a smaller 4-wheel and halftrack sand cleaning machine is used for sandpits in kindergarten and municipality playing fields and for beach volleyball. [5] When environmental or spot-cleaning requires hand operations, an auto-sifting, lightweight, screened rake can be the best choice.