Boyan Slat, a Dutchman barely out of his teens, has swept the world with a very ambitious scheme. He plans to halve the amount of debris floating in the Pacific Ocean within 10 years.

 

The way his idea is different to the rest is that he wants the Ocean to “Clean itself”. Placing enormous floating barriers in rotating tidal locations around the globe (called gyres), his idea is that some of the 8 million tons of plastic dumped in to the sea yearly will flow into capture.

And fear not, as there are no nets and instead huge V-shaped buffers held by floating booms, no wildlife will get harmed.

The current will flow underneath those booms, where animals will be carried through safely. The buoyant plastic will be funnelled above and held at the water’s surface along the barriers for easy gathering and disposal.

This ocean-cleaning scheme is said to be the world’s first and will be deployed in 2016 off the coast of the Japanese island of Tsushima. It will be the largest ever floating structure placed in the ocean, at 6,500 feet wide.

 

If the tests prove encouraging, more of the plastic-capturers will be deployed.

The Ocean Clean-up started with a crowdfunding campaign last year. It raised over $2 Million. Impressive for a 20 year old who wanted to change things.