Boyan Slat (born 27. July 1994) is a Dutch inventor and entrepreneur. From the age of 16 Slat has taken an interest in cleaning plastic waste from the oceans, and he is today CEO of the nonprofit environmental organization The Ocean Cleanup, which he established in 2013.
Boyan Slat is a Dutch inventor who wants to clean up the oceans. Image: DWDD / CC BY-SA 4.0
It will be very hard to convince everyone in the world to handle their plastics responsibly, but what we humans are very good at, is inventing technical solutions to our problems.
Boyan Slat
Slat believes that there can be a technological solution to the environmental problems the world is facing. Slat's idea is to exploit the circulating ocean currents to clean up plastic waste in the ocean. Below you see two illustrations of Slat's idea for cleaning up the ocean.
The Ocean Cleanup wants to use wind (A), waves (B) and current (C), to collect plastic waste in the oceans behind a barrier (D). Image: Weegaweek / CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
You go to a beach, you see a lot of plastic. It's out of the ocean, it stays out of the ocean, so that's good. But the thing is that in this Great Pacific garbage patch, this area twice the size of Texas, there's simply no coastlines to collect plastic. So the idea is to have these very long floating barriers.
Boyan Slat
Top view of floating barrier; A: navigation pod B: satellite pod C: camera pod. There are also nine lanterns situated every 100 metres along the barrier to provide visibility. Image: Weegaweek / CC BY-SA 4.0
The mission of the organisation the Ocean Cleanup is to develop technology to clean the oceans. The Ocean Cleanup is funded through donations and sponsors. The organisation has tested prototypes in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, but so far the trials have encountered problems.
What is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch?
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is a collection of marine debris in the North Pacific Ocean. Marine debris is litter that ends up in the oceans.
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch spans waters from the West Coast of North America to Japan. What is called the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is actually made up of two patches: The Western Garbage Patch, located near Japan, and the Eastern Garbage Patch, located between the U.S. states of Hawaii and California.
These areas of spinning debris are linked together by the North Pacific Subtropical Convergence Zone. In the convergence zone, water from the South Pacific meets up with cooler water from the Arctic. The currents in the zone move marine debris from one patch to the other.
Source: National Georgraphic.
Ocean currents gather plastic waste in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Image: Boyan Slat / CC0
The Ocean Cleanup has also developed technology to stop plastic pollution from entering the ocean from rivers. The organisation claims that 80% of the plastic waste in the ocean comes from 1000 rivers. Two successful prototypes have been deployed to rivers in Indonesia and Malaysia and more are planned for Vietnam and the Dominican Republic. The system, called theInceptor, collects plastic waste onto barges that can then be towed away and emptied. The Inceptor is solar powered and operates autonomously.
In the TED talk below you can watch Slat describing his ideas for cleaning up the oceans.
To truly rid the oceans of plastic, what we need to do is two things: One, we need to clean up the legacy pollution, the stuff that has been accumulating for decades and doesn't go away by itself. But, two, we need to close the tap, which means preventing more plastic from reaching the oceans in the first place.
