The Ocean CleanUp is a non-governmental organization located in the Netherlands whose goal is to clean the rivers and oceans of their plastic waste. It uses various technologies depending on the aquatic environment to be treated in order to optimize the collection of waste.
Whose project is this ?
The man behind this project is Boyan Slat. At the age of 16, while diving, he realized the extent of plastic pollution in the oceans. At 18, driven by his convictions, he left his first year as an aerospace engineer to found his organization The Ocean CleanUp.
So what is The Ocean CleanUp ?
It is an environmental engineering non-governmental organization located in the Netherlands and founded in 2013. It develops technologies to extract plastic pollution found in oceans and rivers.
What technology are they using for their project ?
It is a system that uses passive floating structures. They act as a containment area and drift with the wind and ocean currents to capture marine debris. There is also a solid screen underneath these floating structures that traps subsurface debris. System 001 was a 600m long barrier supported by a 3m wide skirt that hung below. It was created in 2018 and incorporated solar-powered monitoring and navigation systems -GPS, cameras and lanterns-. It was later upgraded with inflatable buoys to increase the speed of the system.In 2019, the new project The Interceptor is unveiled and is designed to counter plastic pollution in waterways. It consists of a 24m long autonomous barge powered by solar panels.
