20 Year Old Claims He Can Rid the World’s Oceans of Plastic

by Lorraine Chow Eco WatchLast June, an intrepid teenaged environmentalist made headlines after developing The Ocean Cleanup, described as the “world’s first feasible concept to clean the oceans of plastic.” Boyan Slat, a Dutch former aerospace engineering student, said his plastic-capturing concept can clean half the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in a decade. The project was inspired after the young man took a diving trip in Greece in 2011 and saw more plastic in the water than fish. Slat’s ambitious project—proposed when he was only 17—received a slew of accolades and was recently named a finalist in London’s Design Museum′s Design of the Year awards, which “celebrate design that promotes or delivers change, enables access, extends design practice or captures the spirit of the year.” Twenty-year-old Boyan Slat’s project aims to passively clean the oceans of plastic. Photo Credit: The Ocean CleanupThe design involves a static platform that passively corrals plastics as wind and ocean currents push debris through V-shaped booms that are 100 kilometers long.



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