The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is 9,000kg lighter thanks to the innovation by Boyan Slat and his drive to make a dent in the massive patch.
The Pacific Ocean (21 October 2021) – The Ocean Cleanup initiative was created in 2013 by a then Dutch teenager, Boyan Slat, to collect plastic from the surface of the ocean without harming marine life. He was inspired to do something after learning about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
The garbage patch was discovered in the ’90s and is a massive island of plastic, rubbish, and debris drifting halfway between California and Hawaii. It consists of over a trillion pieces of debris that have collected there because of the swirling vortex of current. The patch is roughly twice the size of Texas.
Boyan dropped out of college, where he was studying to be an aerospace engineer, and crowdfunded millions of dollars to build a vessel that would be able to remove the plastic litter and other rubbish without putting marine life at risk. It worked!
The vessel, named System 001 (or Wilson to some), set out in September 2018 to start tests to see if it was even possible to combat the Pacific garbage patch. They are now getting ready to release System 002. This new vessel is proof that all of Boyan’s hard work and campaigning has paid off. He has accomplished what he set out to do, to remove the mass of pollution from our ocean. To date, the system has pulled 20,000 pounds of rubbish (which is around 9,000kgs).
It’s exactly 10 years ago that I first learned about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
Back then, everyone told me there was no hope of ever cleaning it up.
They were right then; no method existed to do it. Proud (and relieved!) to say that now there is. https://t.co/ek1kKnxLcO
— Boyan Slat (@BoyanSlat) October 9, 2021
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