The Ocean Cleanup is Now Cleaning Rivers to Fight Plastic Pollution at the Source

The Ocean Cleanup has developed a new strategy to stop plastic waste from entering our oceans and harming marine animals, by removing trash directly from the source: rivers, or as CEO Boyan Slat likes to call it, “The arteries that carry waste from land to the ocean.”

1,000 rivers contribute to 80% of the world’s ocean plastic pollution, and the latest innovation, the “Interceptor”, was created as the first “scalable solution” to the problem, according to The Ocean Cleanup. The organization plans to install the Interceptor in all of the 1,000 most polluting rivers by 2025.

Slat, 25, committed to keeping the solar-powered, quiet Interceptor as sustainable as possible, and launched the innovation at an event in Rotterdam, the Netherlands on October 26.

“To truly rid the oceans of plastic, we need to both clean up the legacy and close the tap, preventing more plastic from reaching the oceans in the first place,” says Slat. “Combining our ocean cleanup technology with the Interceptor, the solutions now exist to address both sides of the equation.”