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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsA Dutch Teenager Had a Dream to Clean Up the World's Oceans. 7 Years On, It's Coming True
Billy Perrigo
September 7, 2018
For someone who gets violently seasick, Boyan Slat spends a lot of time thinking about the ocean. The Dutch inventor has designed the worlds first ocean plastic cleanup system but admits he wont be on the ship with it when it launches out of San Francisco on Saturday. I am not a man of the sea, he says.
After five and a half years of hard work, the 23-year-old Slat will watch from dry land as System 001 a floating barrier nearly 2,000ft long snakes its way out under the Golden Gate Bridge into the Pacific. Its destination is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a gyre of plastic waste twice the size of Texas held in position by ocean currents between California and Hawaii.
If all goes to plan, Slat says, an array of 60 systems could reduce the amount of plastic there by half by 2025. I hope that this will be a turning point for the plastic pollution problem, Slat tells TIME in a phone interview a few days before the launch, in between final preparations. For sixty years it has only gotten worse and worse. Now hopefully were turning the tide.
The eradication of the garbage patch, and more broadly the salvation of our oceans, has been Slats single-minded goal ever since he was 16 years old, when a diving trip to Greece yielded more plastic bag sightings than fish. Struck by the idea for a floating barrier that could collect plastic using the power of ocean currents alone, he founded his company, The Ocean Cleanup, aged just 18.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/dutch-teenager-had-dream-clean-154044582.html
Stonepounder
(4,033 posts)I remember reading about this years ago. I had completely forgotten about it until this post. What a young man!
appalachiablue
(41,171 posts)turbinetree
(24,720 posts)Hekate
(90,793 posts)EleanorR
(2,395 posts)KY_EnviroGuy
(14,494 posts)for anyone wanting to learn more:
The Ocean Cleanup
Link: https://www.theoceancleanup.com/
(snips)
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The Ocean Cleanup develops advanced technologies to rid the world's oceans of plastic. A full-scale deployment of our systems is estimated to clean up 50 % of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in 5 years.
Thanks for this timely update, turbinetree.....
lamp_shade
(14,841 posts)It's 2 hrs 38 min long but FASCINATING and WELL WORTH watching... full of fun facts and mini-docs... nary a boring moment.
(Note: skip to 22:54)