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No Longer A Dream: Removing plastic from the world's oceans is now possible

Nineteen-year old Dutch inventor Boyan Slat has found a way to remove plastic from the world's oceans. Having spent a year researching his plan, he has now presented it to the world. And what a master plan it is!

Since first coming up with The Ocean Cleanup in 2012 while still in high school, Slat has spent a year researching the feasibility of implementing his idea. He presented his findings to the world in New York on Tuesday.

Boyan Slat believes that his invention can be implemented by 2020 in an area between Hawaii and California, one of the most polluted locations in all the world's oceans. Speaking about the area in question, Boyan explains "We can remove almost half of all the plastic from that area within ten years."

Slat's invention has long floating arms over a 100 kilometres long and 3 metres high, arranged in a V-shape and attached to the ocean floor at specific locations. Sea currents move the plastic towards the point of the V-shaped installation from where the plastic gets extracted and stored to be collected every 1,5 months.

The Ocean Cleanup's YouTube channel has posted the video of Boyan Slat's presentation in New York last Tuesday (03 June 2014).

Slat's invention has grown from a high-school project to an organisation involving over a 100 people. Having done the research, Slat has shown that the implementation of his invention is possible. That means that The Ocean Cleanup is ready for the next phase: Crowd-funding to finance the drawing up of blueprints, building and testing of prototypes and finally, the construction of the first Ocean Cleanup installation.

Of course, Slat warns, "We have to stop pouring plastic into our oceans and stop polluting. Otherwise it will all have been for nothing."

Now that The Ocean Cleanup can help combat some of the damage humans have done to the world, let's do our share and stop plastic from getting to the ocean. With a little bit of #GlobalAwareness we can get a long way towards cleaning up our oceans!


Quote from Uitvinder (19) wil oceaan ontdoen van plastic, De Telegraaf (in Dutch)
Profile information sourced from various TV and print media sources.
Translation by What Makes People Tick blog staff members. 
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