You can tell he’s going to be a huge thing in a couple of years by the way he speaks; and by the way he referred to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch as a “Good Starting Problem.” - Comment on the podcast Joe Rogan Experience #1402 - Boyan Slat
When you search for “Plastic in Oceans” via Google Images you will probably see something similar like in the image above. Also when you travel to places near the ocean or live near the ocean you have probably noticed something similar, maybe not that crazy like in the images but if you went diving, surfing or just swimming you probably encountered plastic in the water.
Before I watched the podcast episode of Joe Rogan with Boyan Slat I thought that plastic and the ocean is a problem where you can’t find a sustainable solution to fix it, but the project The Ocean Cleanup of Boyan Slat gives me an optimistic feeling that a solution will be found in the near future. Quoted from Wikipedia:
The organization conducts scientific research into oceanic plastic pollution. It was founded in 2013 by Boyan Slat, a Dutch-born inventor-entrepreneur of Croatian origin who serves as its CEO. It has conducted two expeditions to the North Pacific Gyre, and published scientific papers. The clean-up approach uses barriers in ocean gyres to scoop up marine debris as the barrier is pushed by wind and current. The project aims to launch a total of 60 such systems in the patch by 2021. They predict this capability could clean up 50% of the debris in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in five years. In late October 2019, TOC announced a new initiative, The Interceptor, to attack the trash problem closer to the source, with plans to prevent the 80% of ocean trash coming from 1000 rivers worldwide.
With this post I just want to spread the word for this amazing project! If you are interested in more detail just watch the podcast episode: