The World’s Largest Ocean Cleanup Has Officially Begun
Let’s be honest we all live in one of the most beautiful spots in the country and we all love to play at the beach, and when we see trash floating on shore the first thing we think of is eewwww . Well reading this story makes me extremely happy.
Ambitious dreams have now become a reality as the Ocean Cleanup deploys its $20 million systems designed to clean up the 1.8 trillion pieces of trash floating in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Check out another Forbes piece on how Ocean Cleanup aims to reuse and recycle the ocean plastic.
The floating boom system was deployed last Saturday from San Francisco Bay and will undergo several weeks of testing before being hauled into action. The system was designed by the nonprofit Ocean Cleanup, which was founded in 2013 by 18-year-old Dutch inventor Boyan Slat. Their mission is to develop “advanced technologies to rid the world’s oceans of plastic.”
The floating boom system, with the help of dozens of more booms, is estimated to clean up half of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch within the first five years. Each boom will trap up to 150,000 pounds of plastic per year as they float along the currents between California and Hawaii.