Ocean Cleanup is a foundation implementing advanced technologies to resolve one of the world’s most serious problems, ocean pollution. Their website explains there are actually five big problems: five huge buildups of garbage amassed in the world’s oceans.
The largest one is between Hawaii and California, known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is the Dutch non-profit’s current focus.
Ocean Cleanup has created a 2,000 foot-long floating structure that is designed to use the ocean’s current to gather and collect as much of the 10 million tons of plastic in the ocean as possible. According to the organization, “The mass of the plastic in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (GPGP) was estimated to be approximately 80,000 tonnes , which is 4-16 times more than previous calculations. This weight is also equivalent to that of 500 Jumbo Jets.”
Ocean Cleanup has done extensive analysis of ocean pollution, waves, winds, and currents, and their plastic-catching boom will be employed strategically based on their calculations. The New York Times reported yesterday, “If everything goes as planned, the boom will then be brought to the garbage patch, nearly 1,400 miles offshore, where it is expected to arrive by mid-October, said Boyan Slat, 24, the Dutch inventor and entrepreneur who founded Ocean Cleanup.”
