The road to success hasn't been smooth for 25-year-old Boyan Slat, the founder of The Ocean Cleanup, which aims to rid the oceans of harmful plastic. Slat, a Dutch innovator, came up with his concept for removing garbage from the ocean at age 16, and he's been refining the idea ever since.
Huge plastic-cleaning device may be nearly ready to shrink the Great Pacific Garbage Patch
His system is designed to collect plastic debris using the ocean's currents, though the technology remains largely unproven and has hit several snags. This month, however, the organisation deployed an improved cleanup device that may have fixed some of its initial issues.
If all goes according to plan, the device could eventually remove half the plastic in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch – a trash-filled vortex in the Pacific Ocean that is more than twice as large as Texas – within five years.
- This story was published by BusinessInsider.com.au
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