The Ocean Cleanup, a non-profit organization, is developing and scaling technologies to rid the world’s oceans of plastic. Our aim is to put ourselves out of business once the oceans are clean. Every year, millions of tons of plastic enter the oceans, primarily from rivers. And the plastic that’s afloat within the oceans isn’t going away by itself. To effectively solve the problem, we need to both turn off the tap and mop the floor at the same time.
Every year, millions of tons of plastic enter the oceans, primarily from rivers. And the plastic that’s afloat within the oceans isn’t going away by itself. To effectively solve the problem, we need to both halt the trash flow from rivers, and remove legacy plastics from the oceans at the same time.
The Ocean Cleanup, a non-profit organization, is developing and scaling technologies to rid the world’s oceans of plastic. Our aim is to put ourselves out of business once the oceans are clean.
A Simple Idea Turned into a Moonshot Project
At 16 years of age, Boyan Slat saw more plastic bags than fish when scuba diving in Greece. He thought: “Why can’t we just clean this up?” This question led him to research the plastic pollution problem for a school project. He learned about plastic accumulating in five large oceanic gyres, the largest one being the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. In 2012, Boyan Slat held a TEDx talk about how to rid the world’s oceans of plastic using technology. The video went viral, and the momentum that followed allowed him to drop out of school and founded The Ocean Cleanup.
After many years of research, development, testing, and iteration, The Ocean Cleanup now has technologies to intercept plastic in rivers before it reaches the ocean, and technologies to remove the plastic that is already out there—debris that has been building up for decades.
Ocean Systems
Plastic, once trapped in a gyre, will slowly break down, continually fragmenting into microplastics. Microplastic debris (< 5mm) is not only more challenging to clean up, but is also easily mistaken for food by marine life. The time to clean up is now.
The ocean garbage patches are massive. To effectively clean an area of such magnitude, a calculated and energy-efficient solution is required. With a relative speed difference maintained between the cleanup system and the plastic, we can concentrate the plastic for extraction. Learn more about our ocean technology and System 03, our current ocean system iteration.
The harvested plastic will be brought back to shore for recycling. We made our very first product – The Ocean Cleanup Sunglasses – using the catch of System 001/B in 2019. Going forward, we do not intend to make our own products, but partner with companies who will use our ocean plastic in their products.
Interceptors (TM)
1000 rivers, or 1% of the world’s rivers, account for 80% of the plastic flowing into the oceans from land. We have developed a toolkit of Interceptors to tackle these rivers.
Together with corporations, governments and individuals globally, we plan on tackling 1000 of the most polluted rivers with our technology, knowledge, experience, and network.
The Ocean Cleanup is a project; our goal is to reach a 90% reduction of floating ocean plastic by 2040. To see all cleanup systems deployed, visit our Dashboard.