The Ocean Cleanup, the Dutch organization currently tackling the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (GPGP), has just reached a milestone of 220 tons of plastic removed from the ocean (200k kilograms).
In recent years, the nonprofit completed the test run of their new system 002/B which can capture multiple tons of garbage in one sequence with its large booms measuring a mile and a half in length.
The GPGP is not so much an island as it is an area where major currents and winds have brought together trillions of pieces of plastic.
By using the data of the currents and the winds to estimate volumes of plastic and to guide the capture vessels, Boyan Slat, the CEO and Founder of Ocean Cleanup, believes he can clean the whole patch in just a decade.
BREAKING: 200,000 kg of plastic extracted from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
— The Ocean Cleanup (@TheOceanCleanup) April 4, 2023
System 002/B has made its first extraction of 2023 - 6260 kg of plastic out of the GPGP, bringing us to an exciting milestone - together, we have cleaned up over 200,000 kg of plastic from the GPGP. pic.twitter.com/wkc0IAW3dl
Slat’s work in the GPGP will go down as one of the greatest accomplishments in the 21st century. In front of him was a true leviathan of a problem—a patch of plastic trash twice the size of Texas swirling in International Waters where even the loudest climate-hollering nation-state had no desire to even crack an idea about how to clean it.
MORE ABOUT THE OCEAN CLEANUP: Ocean Cleanup Nonprofit Gets $25Mil From Airbnb Co-Founder to Launch Massive Plastic Pollution Cleanup
Relying only on his team, and his vision of basic scientific deduction and elegant engineering solutions, Slat proved that even the biggest problem was nevertheless solvable.
His next challenge is to somehow find uses or locations for all those billions of pieces of plastic. At the moment, the recycling is done by hand, with each piece of plastic separated by polymer type.
He had commissioned a line of sunglasses to be made with ocean plastic, and they sold out rapidly. Now, Slat is trying to partner with companies interested in using some of the GPGP waste streams for material supplies after recycling.
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