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WE PROUDLY SUPPORT the ocean cleanup
A SCHOOLBOY'S IDEA TO CLEAN UP THE OCEAN
In 2011, at age 16 a young Dutch schoolboy diving in Greece was saddened by discovering more plastic than fish. On his he dedicated a high school project to investigating plastic pollution in the ocean and why it was considered impossible to clean up.
This schoolboy, Boyan Slat, went on to become the youngest-ever recipient of the UN’s highest environmental accolade; Champion of the Earth, and today he is the CEO of The Ocean Cleanup, a non-profit organization, developing advanced technologies to rid the world’s oceans of plastic.
"For society to progress, we should not only move forward but also clean up after ourselves."
BOYAN SLAT, CEO & FOUNDER, THE OCEAN CLEANUP
THE OCEAN CLEAN UP SYSTEM
Every year, millions of tons of plastic are polluted into our oceans, a significant percentage of this plastic drifts with the ocean into circulating currents known as gyres. Once concentrated in a gyre, plastics start to break down into microplastics which are easily mistaken for food by sea life. There are 5 major gyres across our oceans, the largest, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (GPGP) between Hawaii and California, contains 1.8 trillion pieces of plastic and is 3 times the size of France.
The GPGP is the first to be tackled by The Ocean Cleanup system, launched in November 2018, they estimate to be able to remove 50% of the plastic in just 5 years’ time.
The passive system is designed to move with the currents - just like the plastic - to catch it. The system consists of a 600-meter-long U-shaped floater that sits at the surface of the water and a tapered 3-meter-deep skirt attached below. The floater provides buoyancy to the system and prevents plastic from flowing over it, while the skirt stops debris from escaping underneath. As the system moves through the water, the plastic continues to collect within the boundaries of the U-shaped system. Moving slightly faster than the plastic, the system will act like a giant Pac-Man, skimming the surface of the ocean.
HOW IT'S FUNDED
A 2014 crowdfunding campaign saw over 2 million USD raised in 100 days from over 38,000 funders from 160 countries worldwide making it “the most successful non-profit crowdfunding campaign in history” at the time.
Support from commercial partners such as Maersk as well as public funding has allowed the first system to launch but continued donations are needed to help scale up operations.
We Sea Change proudly supports The Ocean Cleanup and 10% of every sale from goes towards The Ocean Cleanup North Pacific Foundation.
The Ocean Cleanup anticipates that the first plastic will be collected and returned to land within 6 months after deployment. This will mark the first time that free floating plastic will have been successfully collected at sea. After returning the plastic to land it will be recycled into products and the revenue used to help fund the cleanup operation and expansion to the other four ocean gyres.
Once proven, and with sufficient funding, The Ocean Cleanup aims to scale up the fleets working across the 5 gyres with the ultimate goal: reducing the amount of plastic in the world’s oceans by at least 90% by 2040.
Want to find out more? Check out The Ocean Cleanup here
“I am incredibly grateful for the tremendous amount of support we have received over the past few years from people around the world, that has allowed us to develop, test, and launch a system with the potential to begin to mitigate this ecological disaster.”
BOYAN SLAT, CEO & FOUNDER, THE OCEAN CLEANUP