Ingenious 19-year-old Develops Plan to Clean up Oceans in 5 Years

Worried about the tiny fragments of plastic covering beaches and polluting food chains, 19-year-old Boyan Slat created the Ocean Array Plan, an ingenious project that could remove 7,250,000 tons of plastic from the world’s oceans in just five years.

With his concept called Marine Litter Extraction, Boyan Slat proposes a radical clean-up solution, for which he won the Best Technical Design award 2012 at the TU Delft University in the Netherlands, where he is a first-year Aerospace Engineering student.

Slat’s idea consists of an anchored network of floating booms and processing platforms run by solar power that could be dispatched to garbage patches around the world.

It is estimated that through the selling of plastic retrieved over the five years, the project could be fully paid for.

As an underwater photographer and diver, he has always been passionate about applying technology in and around the oceans, especially as a witness to the environmental degradation beneath the surface.

Slat founded the Ocean Cleanup Foundation to ensure his project moves forward.

(WATCH the TedX-talk below, or READ the full story from True Activist)

Photo from BOYANSLAT.com

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