A project designed to clean up trash in the North Pacific Ocean will finally start construction within the next year.
Boyan Slat, the 22-year-old Dutch CEO of the Ocean Cleanup, announced in May that his company will begin building a series of floating barriers in the Great Pacific garbage patch — a vortex of marine debris consisting of plastics and rubbish — that will push trash to the shore.
Slat’s design was praised for its simplicity.The Ocean Cleanup The collected garbage will then be recycled into products that will be sold to help fund the initiative.
Slat first conceived of his cleanup concept as a teenager and dropped out of school to focus on developing it in 2013. The project received sizeable funding after winning a handful of design awards in 2015.
“The elegance of the design is that we managed to make it even simpler,” Slat told Dezeen. “It’s just one barrier, one anchor, two lines connecting them and a central passive collection point for the plastic.”
Slat said that these barriers will hasten the cleanup process from 10 years to five.
Watch a simulation of the process below.
