The Ocean Cleanup

Tuesday I visited a start-up event called Singularity Evening at SUP46 together with my team mates from BEMPS where Virpal Singh presented his experiences from Singularity University. It was awesome because he presented a very innovative environment with people from all over the word trying to find solutions for the greatest problems of humanity like pollution, diseases, water or criminality. In context of pollution he showed a picture of a dead bird with a lot of plastics in its stomach. In this moment I remembered a young guy I saw on Youtube presenting his venture.

The venture is called “The Ocean Cleanup” and tries to get as much plastic out of the oceans as possible. It started 2012 when the 17 years old Boyan Slat presented his idea. Solving this problem is very important because sea pollution is responsible for a lot of dead animals or even species, a high financial damage for maritime economy. And the plastic even damages human’s health because the plastic gets through food like fish in our stomach as well.
The idea is innovative and smart because it is totally different from existing ideas for solving this problem which have in common to collect the plastics by a boat.
There are millions of tons of plastics in the ocean but most of it is concentrated in five rotating currents, called gyres. Boyan’s idea is to use the flow and put a barrier in it with a hopper shape so that the particles get collected at one point where you can simply take them out of water. So you do not have to move a vessel for thousands of kilometres, which is nice for your carbon footprint and your budget. In the end you can even earn money through recycling of the plastics you collect at the high concentrated points. This recycled plastics have a nice effect on the environment because you do not need resources for producing new plastics.
The venture has already collected 2.154.282 $ from 38.6125 people so and the pilot is running.
I am telling you this story because I think it is remarkable that a 17 years old guy has the possibility to start such a great project out of one smart idea. And it is a venture which could have an extreme positive influence on the world and its future because it tries to solve one of the big problems of humanity Virpal Singh talked about. The first testing phases are over so the system could run in only a few years and make our planet more worth living on it.
For more information, please check this link:

http://www.theoceancleanup.com/