So this 21 yr old “Boyan Slat” is the CEO of this amazing project to clean up our oceans. Apparently after snorkelling on a holiday as a 16yr old and seeing more plastic bags than fish, Boyan was inspired to come up with an idea to clean up the oceans, and five years later his dream is taking it’s first step with a small prototype in the North Sea.
Partially crowdfunded along with some healthy contributions from a handful of philanthropists, Boyan is trialling a smaller version of a simple solution he believes could clean up 50% of the trash from the Atlantic Ocean Garbage Patch. He hopes to fail in this test. Citing a common mantra of successful entrepreneurs, he believes he’ll learn more from failure than success.
He was quoted as saying that with traditional methods of cleaning up the oceans such as netting, we could expect to have a clean ocean in about 75,000 years. His method tramples all over that timescale. He creates what is essentially a structure along the ocean floor which mimics a shoreline and lets the natural ocean currents and tides do the rest.
For more information on this inspiring young bloke check out here:
https://ecowatch.com/2016/06/23/boyan-slats-ocean-cleanup-prototype/