THE OCEAN CLEANUP

Boyan Slat is only 19 years old but could be the youngest employer to have more than 100 employees in the world.  He has a revolutionary plan to scoop up several thousand tonnes of plastic waste that is lying in the oceans.  There are some estimates that there could be 100 million tonnes of plastic waste in the oceans.  This is actually causing a huge damage to the fishing and tourism sectors each year.  This plastic waste is known as the "Plastic Soup".

The Plastic Soup is swirling around in the five main Gyres or rotating oceanic currents in the world.  Boyan Slat has come up with an innovative idea to trap the plastic soup by harnessing the power of sea currents.  He is an engineering student in Netherlands.  He raised a simple question "Why go after plastic if it can come to you?  He went for scuba diving in Greece and saw more plastics than fish under the water.

He presented his idea in 2012 and once his method was acclaimed as an innovative method he kept his engineering studies at bay and jumped into the Ocean Cleanup drive.  His design calls for two vast floating arms, 50 kilometers long each in the form of V anchored to the ocean floor.  The ocean currents will force the waste into the "V" and to a cylindrical platform 11 metres in diameter floating at the end which can store upto 3000 cubit meters of plastic for eventual collection by a ship.  A solar powered conveyor belt will take the largest chunks of plastic to and from a shredder so that it will fit in the cylinder.  He has gone ahead with this method and today employs more than 100 people in his "Ocean Cleanup" project.

Boyan Slat wants to set up a pilot project and run for the next four to five years before installing the first "Operational Cleanup Array" in the north Pacific Ocean.  He has given a wonderful short speech on his project and watch this video:



Boyan Slat has set up a crowdfunding website to collect $ 2 Million and within the first 30 days he has reached close to $ 1 Million.  The feasibility study for this Ocean Cleanup Project has been done with the involvement of nearly 70 people including Engineers, Lawyers, Oceanographers and other professionals.

This youngster deserves all the support and encouragement and I really admire his foresight, clarity in thinking and the conviction with which he has gone ahead with this noble cause.  We are seeing the surface of the Ocean and enjoying the vast, quiet, blue surface.  Boyan Slat has actually lifted the top layer and seen below and what is lying below the ocean is really something very harmful.

I wish Boyan Slat all the very best and I am sure he will succeed in his mission to Cleanup the Oceans.

T.P.Anand
Dubai, U.A.E.
10th August 2014