Boyan Slat was just a teenager when he founded the Ocean Cleanup in 2013. Aside from the fact that a teenager was endeavoring to clean the ocean, his story was incredibly compelling because of the simplicity of the tool he’d invented to do it. More than a decade later and several years out at sea, Slat’s project has evolved into a massive operation that tackles pollution in bodies of water around the world and uses a wide range of technology to do so.
The old and seemingly simple method of dragging a net through the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (it was never that simple, but the concept was brilliant in its simplicity) has grown quite a bit. The organization recently shared insights on the research and development that goes into it all, from building scaled replicas of the cleanup systems to deploying drones over the ocean. The whole operation is impressive. Crew members go so far as to mimic how ocean plastic moves and can or can’t be captured most efficiently — research that’s likely evolved directly from a major turning point with System 001, which broke after deployment and wasn’t able to retain much of the trash it was catching.
“We realize that setbacks like this are inevitable when pioneering new technology at a rapid pace.”” Slat said back in 2019 when that first system broke.
The drones are essentially being used as scouts. They scan the ocean and then the information they collect will “steer” the cleaning systems toward areas where the Ocean Cleanup can expect a larger catch. The entire system is essentially dependent upon Artificial Intelligence, unmanned flying machines, and a wide range of advanced technological tools to maximize efficiency.
“Knowing that the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is still out there doing all this harm while (us) having a technology that can clean it today, is frustrating,” Slat says. “I wish we could be out there right now with 10 systems cleaning this up.”
