The planet’s oceans are polluted with millions of tons of floating trash, much of it concentrated in giant slow-moving whirlpools called gyres. Purifying even one, some experts estimate, could take millennia. But Dutch wunderkind Boyan Slat, a 21-year-old engineering-school dropout, has come up with a way to do so in just a decade. His organization, the Ocean Cleanup, is devising a series of booms that would corral flotsam for extraction and eventual recycling, all the while allowing marine life to pass beneath undisturbed.
After raising more than $2 million through crowdfunding, he is now working on a prototype for an especially infamous stretch of sea: the Northern Hemisphere’s Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Says Slat, “It’s our duty to prevent things from getting any worse.”
For more information go totheoceancleanup.com
