The Plan to Eliminate Massive Amounts of Garbage in the Ocean

A Dutch nonprofit environmental engineering organization is optimistic that it can raise the necessary funds to complete its mission of eliminating the Great Pacific Garbage Patch by 2034.

“We call upon the world to relegate the Great Pacific Garbage Patch to the history books,” states Boyan Slat, founder and CEO of The Ocean Cleanup. “This environmental catastrophe has been allowed to exist, unresolved, for too long, and for the first time, we can tell the world what it costs, what is needed, and how long it could take.”

Eliminating the patch – some 79,000 metric tons of plastic waste floating in the ocean in an area roughly twice the size of Texas – would cost $7.5 billion. Although this amount seems massive, it represents less than a month’s worth of Apple’s profit last year, a sixth of the bonus Tesla shareholders awarded to CEO Elon Musk, below the annual spend on Halloween decorations in the United States alone, and only 1% of the net yearly profits of the world’s plastic producers. Over the years, The Ocean Cleanup has developed many new technologies to collect this plastic from the water, including System 03, a floating barrier roughly one kilometre long towed between two vessels. So far, the nonprofit has fished out 450,000 kilograms of trash, or 0.5% of its total, but it is convinced that operations can be ramped up to get rid entirely of the patch within a decade. And should the nonprofit’s latest technological ideas become a reality, the patch could be cleared in five years at just $4 billion.