ROCHESTER, N.Y. (WROC) —— With an increasing focus on plastics in the environment, new and innovative solutions to limit how much makes it into our waterways are appearing all over the country. Even right here at RIT where a group of researchers just received $900,000 from NOAA’s Marine Debris Program to stop plastic as it’s entering storm drains across Rochester.  Utilizing a product called the LittaTrap and some sophisticated modeling, Christy Tyler, and her team are set to install 50 LittaTraps in storm drains all across Rochester and Brighton in a bid to capture the most plastic that they can even with their small footprint.  “There's 30,000 storm drains in the city. So, the scale of the problem is huge. So we want to be able to maximize resources by pinpointing the exact areas, the storm drains, where the debris goes directly out to the environment,” said Tyler. It’s a difficult choice to make, as between each block the amount of plastic and other debris that enters each drain can vary wildly. They’ve been able to use the data they’ve gotten so far from 9 LittaTraps that are already in place around the city to help unravel some of the mystery “There's a lot of work that needs to be done to use mathematical modeling to go up from the small number of drains to extrapolate out to try to understand how much plastic is entering the drains and eventually rivers and lakes from the entire city,” said Matthew Hoffman, a Professor of Mathematics and Statistics at RIT as well as one of the projects faculty supervisors.  Much of what ends up in the traps installed so far isn’t too surprising either. But every once in a while even those who spend their time digging through the trash, like Paige Arieno a Master’s Student at RIT, do find something that shocks even them.  “You know, we have the typical things like leaves, grass, debris. And then we have all sorts of anthropogenic debris. So chip bags, a ton of candy wrappers, cigarettes as always, a lot of tobacco products,” said Arieno. “The first time I ever went through my samples, I found a full hot dog in one of them.” Through her work cataloging the debris from 9 already installed LittaTraps across Rochester and Brighton, Arieno has been able to piece together key data that shows how much plastic can be traced to one spot.  “Any one drain could... you know, we're estimating that there's about 3,000 plus pieces of plastic that are entering each year.” When you input that data into the model that Prof. Hoffman and his master’s student Jay Kucharek built to help estimate how much debris the entire system might be producing, the scale is shocking.  “So what our model shows for the year of 2023, about 33,000 pounds of plastic entered the storm drains that flow to stormwater [treatment plants],” said Kucharek. “And then about 11,000 pounds are entering the MS4 drains, which flow directly into the environment. So every year in Brighton and Rochester alone, 11,000 pounds of plastic just goes straight into the environment from our storm drains.” The other goal of their model is to, as mentioned earlier by Prof. Hoffman, help them determine in addition to how much is entering the system, but also where the highest concentrations are originating from as well. There have been years of work that led up to this, and for those who have worked on it, taking this from a proof of concept to a potential real world solution is powerful.  “What's really exciting for us is that we spent the last two to three years researching this problem and being able to use our data and research and apply it to this scale, this real setting is amazing for us,” said Kucharek. This work isn’t just limited to the lab either, according to Prof. Tyler other facets and adjacent projects include a large wake of community engagement.  “In addition to interception, we have a really robust outreach and education program planned, and this is particularly targeted at some of the environmental justice areas of the city,” said Tyler. We're working in partnership with New York Sea Grant and a number of other partners on our Cascade educational program [...] and Cascade stands for Community Action for Stormwater Cleanup and Debris Elimination. And that's a program where we have youth at recreation centers and schools in the city working with us on collecting debris from litter traps, analyzing it, and then coming up with outreach and marketing plans for their neighborhoods.” That program is funded by a separate grant from the National Sea Grant Office Community Action Coalition which is also set to help the CASCADE program expand to Buffalo and Syracuse. Prof. Tyler and her group also partner with the City of Rochester, the Seneca Park Zoo Society, the Rochester Museum and Science Center, and SRGMF Consulting to make the program as comprehensive as possible.