Designs of the Year 2015: The Ocean Cleanup Project

WORDS Malibongwe Tyilo IMAGES via dezeen.com and blog.surf-prevention.com.


Twenty-year-old Dutch student Boyan Slat’s project seeks to rid the ocean of 70 million kilograms of plastic rubbish in the next 10 years.

The problem first hit home for Slat in 2011. While on a diving holiday in Greece at the age of 16, he noticed a huge amount of plastic waste in the water. He immediately started working on his idea to clean up the ocean as a school project, which was eventually given an award by Delft’s University of Technology, and more recently The Ocean Cleanup has been shortlisted for the 2015 Designs of The Year award.

It is a widely known fact that our oceans are heavily polluted. A vast amount of that pollution is floating plastic rubbish, which eventually comes together into floating islands of rubbish where the currents converge. These islands are called plastic gyres, and there are five major gyres currently estimated to contribute 500 million kilograms of plastic waste to rubbish currently floating in the world’s oceans.

While previous proposals to use nets are considered too expensive and possibly damaging to wildlife, Slat’s proposed solution is more passive. It is made up of 100 kilometres of static floating filters that act as barriers to collect waste, utilising natural currents to let the oceans clean themselves. The aim is for this to become the largest clean up in history.

The filters would be arranged in two 50km arms, forming a V-shape, filtering only the top 3m of water. Slat’s research found that this is where the highest concentration of rubbish lies, and since the main currents run much deeper, this also reduces the potential for fish and other ocean life to be affected.

Slat’s organization now has over 100 volunteers. It is supported by 15 other institutions and plans to launch a full-scale pilot of The Ocean Cleanup over the next three years.

We think it’s amazing.

(video via The Ocean Cleanup on YouTube)

For more information, visit theoceancleanup.com or boyanslat.com.