Once upon a time there was a smart TU (Technical University Delft) student in the Netherlands. His name is Boyan Slat and he had a wonderful dream: what if he could design a catcher which fished all the plastic soup from the oceans. He thought about it, kept working at it, he could not let it go.
It would of course cost a lot of money to finance his idea, but he had already thought about it, crowd funding, of course! In 2012 Boyan held a TED-talk and the world took to his idea immediately. The Ocean Cleanup was born!
In the first test phase there were some problems with the invention, which were criticized from all sides. Scientists who claimed they did not believe in it from the beginning, marine biologists who were concerned about the capture of sea creatures which live just below the surface of the oceans and so on. But Boyan Slat did not give up, he went all out to make his dream come true and it worked!
Meanwhile Boyan Slat's dream has come true! He is no longer a student but an entrepreneur and tons of plastic are fished from the ocean on a daily basis. There is more news: The Ocean Cleanup has a new invention, The Ocean Cleanup Interceptor. In addition to fishing plastic from the oceans, they now also do it in rivers. This to prevent the plastic from reaching the ocean so they no longer need to disrupt any ocean life. Such good news, we are happy to inform you about, especially on Earth Day!
Happy Earth Day!