At the age of 19, while most of the youngsters are busy enjoying, ‘so-called-life’; Boyan Slat was a different creed. Boyan was born in 1994 in Netherlands. In 2011 when he was 17 years old, Boyan went Scuba Diving in Greece. To his astonishment, he found that there was more plastic deep inside than the fishes. He was shocked and decided to do something about it. He made it as his high school project as to why it was impossible to clean up the ocean.
After coming back from Greece, he came up with the idea of building a passive plastic catchment system, using circulating ocean currents to net plastic waste, which he presented at a TEDx talk in Delft in 2012.
Slat discontinued his aerospace engineering studies at TU Delft to devote his time to developing his idea. He founded The Ocean Cleanup in 2013 (when he was about 19 year old), and shortly after, his TEDx talk went viral after being shared on several news sites.
The Ocean Cleanup is a nonprofit environmental engineering organization based in the Netherlands that develops and deploys technology to extract plastic pollution from the oceans and to capture it in rivers before it can reach the ocean. It develops both ocean and river based catch systems. Its ocean system consists of a funnel shaped floating barrier which is towed by two ships. The ocean system is deployed in oceanic gyres to collect marine debris
Trillions of pieces of plastic float on the surface of our oceans, damaging habitats and contaminating food chains; a problem forecast to worsen exponentially as the stream of plastic flowing into the ocean from rivers increases. They address the plastic problem with a dual strategy: removing plastic that is already polluting the oceans, while also intercepting plastic in rivers to prevent it reaching the ocean and adding to the problem.
Throughout 2021 and 2022, the ocean cleaning system has been harvesting plastic from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (GPGP), estimated to contain around 100,000,000 kilograms of plastic. Each branch of this strategy is essential to efficiently rid the oceans of plastic. The Ocean Cleanup’s engineers and scientists have conducted in-depth research and modelling of plastic accumulation in the oceans which shows that neither ocean cleanup nor river interception alone is enough.
Their innovative ocean cleaning system is already removing lot of plastic from the Pacific Ocean. With their Interceptor river solutions deployed around the world, they aim to reduce floating ocean plastic by 90% by 2040. Their goal is to tackle plastic in the world’s 1000 most polluting rivers, which are responsible for 80% of plastic emissions into the oceans.
As a non-profit organization they rely entirely on third-party support. Coca-Cola Company, Maersk, Kia, rock band Coldplay, and the Government of the Netherlands, are their partners, who help them fund, for helping them play a role in reducing ocean plastic.
While their initial focus was on the Pacific Ocean and its garbage patch, they extended to rivers in countries including Indonesia, Guatemala, United States and now also in India.
With these selfless youngsters coming up with innovative ideas, the world surely to be in safe hands!
References –
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ocean_Cleanup
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boyan_Slat
https://sdgs.un.org/partnerships/cleanup-90-floating-ocean-plastic-2040
