Boyan Slat is changing the world with his innovative nonprofit. The Ocean Cleanup is dedicated to ridding the world’s oceans of plastic debris.

“When I was 16 years old, I was scuba diving in Greece and I saw more plastic bags than fish. And I wondered why can’t we just clean this up?” he explained. “I then enrolled at the University of Delft, I started studying aerospace engineering. And at some point in time I had to make the choice, am I going to fully focus on the university right now or on this cleanup project?”

Slat initially struggled to raise money for the project but found success in crowdfunding. He eventually raised $2 million, making his one of the most successful crowdfunding campaigns in history.

No one had ever deployed an apparatus in the ocean as large as his to pick up plastic, which meant Slat and his team had to solve for a problem that had never been posed before. They eventually came up with a way to make the contraption drift through the water and gravitate towards areas with the highest plastic density.

After five years of research and development, the first Ocean Cleanup system is finally going to be deployed. With the plastic they procure, Slat wants it to be turned into products that people will be able to buy, which will hopefully fund more cleanups.  

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