Clean up the ocean: nearly a million kilograms of waste is picked up from seas and rivers

Ocean Cleanup currently has two very large sweeper arms operating in the Pacific Ocean. They float above sea level and take up everything they come across like a C-shaped broom. The collected waste can then be collected and taken out.

In addition, the organization has built three “petty thieves” who have been deployed on the rivers of the world’s cities to prevent waste from reaching the sea there. This is called The objectors It has successfully disposed of floating waste in Indonesia, Malaysia and the Dominican Republic.

The CEO and founder of Ocean Cleanup, Dutchman Boyan Slat (now 27), is the inventor of the hundreds of meters long sweeping arm. He developed a plastic mask for his profile assignment in high school in Delft.

Floating dumps

An estimated 1,800 billion pieces of trash float in the Pacific Ocean, weighing about 80 million kilograms. This plastic soup is called Great Pacific Garbage Patch It is about three times the size of France. There are also four large piles of trash in the oceans. Together, they contain another 80 million kilograms of rubble and plastic.

Floating landfills increase every year as millions of tons of waste flow into the sea via rivers. This waste mainly comes from the slums of Asian capitals, where there are no garbage trucks and where all waste ends up in rivers. According to Ocean Cleanup, 1 percent of all rivers accounts for 80 percent of all waste in the ocean.

The 800-meter-long ‘Jenny’ plastic catcher, Ocean Cleanup’s largest sweeping arm to date – was recently deployed for the first time in Great Pacific Garbage Patch. The first tests are going well.