Dutch 'Boy Genius' Thinks He Can Get The Ocean To Clean Itself - Turns Out, He's Right

Aug 31, 2018 by apost team

Recently you’ve probably read many articles about how much trash and plastic are in the ocean, and are most likely unsure as to what you can do to reduce your impact.

When Boyan Slat, an entrepreneur as well as a Dutch inventor, was just 18-years-old in 2012, he was honored with the pleasure of giving his first TED Talk. His topic? How to clean up the trash in the ocean. In his speech, he detailed his new plan that would help clean up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

This area is a humungous and ever-growing island of trash and plastic that is located in the north Pacific ocean, between the states of California and Hawaii.

Just when was the world's largest dump discovered?

In 1997, the area was found by an ocean researcher who also happens to be a sailor. His name was Charles Moore, and he was competing in the Transpacific Yacht Race at the time.

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Why does trash collect in this area? A spinning vortex made up of ocean currents, known as a gyre, is located in the north Pacific. The gyre brings in debris from the ocean and gathers it into one location. Recent studies of the area found that this patch of garbage is approximately 4 to 16 times greater than first estimated.

It’s approximated that the garbage pile is two times larger than Texas, and three times larger than France! The garbage mostly consists of plastic, fishing nets, and other waste from humans.

Charles Moore, who first found the patch of garbage, estimated that it would take a shocking 79,000 years to reduce all of the waste. But Boyan Slat, the Dutch genius, believes that with the correct technological approach, the waste can be reduced in 5 simple years. He also believes that he knows a way to clean up the garbage with minimal effects on the rest of the environment, and can find a way to make it profitable.

Is this too good to be true? Nope. Slat has created a foundation that is in the works of launching the most massive collection of ocean waste that we’ve ever seen as humans.

Slat has dedicated the last six years of his life to studying and understanding the ocean’s gyres. He began his own project to reduce the impact of humans in the ocean when he was just 18 years old. He wanted to develop the most effective method of treating this patch of garbage.

His Ocean Cleanup Foundation has grown into a full-time business operation, and hires dozens of researchers, scientists, and engineers that work together daily to find a way to reduce plastic in the ocean. Their cleanup efforts are said to begin in the summer months of 2018. Slat’s earlier predictions were close, but they believe that half of the plastic on the Great Pacific Garbage Patch can be collected and withdrawn properly within just 5 years.

Just how much plastic is in the ocean?

Slat’s team has discovered that there are nearly 1.8 trillion pieces of plastic just in this patch alone. To put it into perspective, that would be like having 241 pieces of plastic for each human that lives on Earth. The plastic is detrimental to marine life and even birds. It also becomes more dangerous for humans to consume fish out of the ocean as the more plastic builds up.

One of their methods of cleaning up trash is to think like plastic. Their ocean machinery that will be used to clean the oceans takes into account the current of the ocean as well as the physics behind the method that plastic gathers into. Their method is low energy, low effort, and uses little resources in comparison to other types of cleanup.

If you’re interested in more detail about the prototype for ocean cleanup, you can watch here:

If you love the ocean, you probably want to see it clean. That’s why people like Slat are so important to the betterment of society. What do you think about this young Dutch genius and his efforts to create a cleaner marine environment? Let us know in the comments below!