{"id":524899,"date":"2026-03-09T16:46:24","date_gmt":"2026-03-09T16:46:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/524899\/"},"modified":"2026-03-09T16:46:24","modified_gmt":"2026-03-09T16:46:24","slug":"my-invention-makes-ocean-plastic-the-worlds-cheapest-problem-to-solve","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/524899\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018My invention makes ocean plastic the world\u2019s cheapest problem to solve\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

The global plastic pollution crisis could be solved within 15 years and for less than $1 billion, according to an ambitious plan to stop litter getting into the oceans.<\/p>\n

Boyan Slat, an inventor, environmentalist and the chief executive of The Ocean Cleanup, a nonprofit organisation, argues that to call his plan a bargain would be to sell it short. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt is the world\u2019s cheapest problem to solve,\u201d the 31-year-old said. \u201cIf we\u2019re off by a factor of two or three, it\u2019s still the cheapest world problem. Even if we\u2019re off by a factor of 100, it\u2019s still the cheapest world problem.\u201d<\/p>\n

But, crucially, he added: \u201cIt\u2019s not solved yet. We still need to raise a significant amount of money, and there is a big execution challenge.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Boyan<\/p>\n

Boyan Slat<\/p>\n

THE OCEAN CLEANUP<\/p>\n

His confidence relies on research that suggests that stopping pollution in just 30 cities around the world will cut a third of the plastic waste that enters the oceans. Slat plans to tackle these first 30 cities by 2030 at a cost of $350 million (\u00a3260 million).<\/p>\n

His method uses floating barriers to trap plastic in the cities\u2019 rivers. If it cannot be scooped up by traditional excavators, \u201cinterceptors\u201d \u2014 autonomous boats with conveyor belts \u2014 are sent to gather the waste and send it for recycling or disposal.<\/p>\n

The momentum from that would enable the charity to stop 90 per cent of floating plastic from entering the ocean by 2040, and to clear up the \u201clegacy\u201d waste, particularly in hotspots such as the \u201cgreat Pacific garbage patch\u201d \u2014 an accumulation of about 100,000 tonnes floating between Hawaii and California. In total, he believes, it would cost less than $1 billion. <\/p>\n

\u201cSo 2040 is our publicly stated goal to get to 90 per cent, but I think we can go faster than that, depending on how things go in the next few years.\u201d<\/p>\n

Slat, who grew up in the Dutch city of Delft, dropped out of his degree in aerospace engineering after one semester to set up his project. \u201cI realised if I wanted to make this a success, I needed to dedicate all my time to this.\u201d<\/p>\n

He added: \u201cI thought if it didn\u2019t work out, I could always go back to uni after half a year.\u201d That was 13 years ago. <\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Boyan Slat on a beach near the mouth of the Motagua river in Guatemala<\/p>\n

THE OCEAN CLEANUP<\/p>\n

Slat describes stopping plastic entering the ocean as a \u201cquick fix\u201d \u2014 a way of \u201cbuying the world time\u201d to stop producing plastic waste in the first place.<\/p>\n

Most developed countries have already stopped plastic getting into the ocean, he said. The poorest countries are also not a huge part of the problem, because they simply do not throw away much plastic. The big problem is those middle-income countries where there is enough wealth to have high plastic consumption, but not enough wealth to have developed effective waste-management systems. <\/p>\n

\u201cAbout 60 per cent comes from Asia, 20 per cent from Africa and 20 per cent from the Americas,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The team is already working on rivers across the world, including Indonesia, India, Colombia, the Philippines and the Caribbean, and has so far extracted nearly 50 million kilograms of rubbish.<\/p>\n

Watch an Interceptor work in Los Angeles:<\/p>\n

The focus of the problem among this demographic of countries means it is a relatively simple problem to target those rivers where the most plastic is being spewed into the oceans.<\/p>\n

Slat pointed to the Motagua river in Guatemala, which sends more plastic into the sea than all 38 members of the OECD. \u201cThat one river is about 2 per cent of global plastic emissions,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

Antonio Lopez, 59, knows first-hand the scale of the problem. He worked as a fisherman in El Quetzalito, on the banks of the Motagua, before the deluge of plastic began flowing about 30 years ago.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt got to the point where I couldn\u2019t catch fish anymore, because of the amount of plastic in the river and ocean. Any fish we caught had eaten plastic or had plastic rings from drinks bottles and cans stuck around them.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of Slat\u2019s interceptors arrived in September 2024, cleaning the river to the point Lopez has been able to start fishing again. <\/p>\n

Slat said: \u201cI think by next year we\u2019ll be at one deployment a week. And then we want to get to two deployments per week. Then we need only four or five more doublings to get the job done.\u201d<\/p>\n

They have received significant donations in the past, including $25 million from Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia in 2023. Coldplay have backed the project by funding the clean-up of rivers in Malaysia and Indonesia. <\/p>\n

But last week the charity received its biggest donation to date \u2014 $121 million from the Audacious Project, the charitable funding offshoot of the TED organisation. <\/p>\n

\u201cDaring ideas matter most when they become achievable,\u201d said Chris Anderson, founder of the Audacious Project and TED chairman, announcing the funding. <\/p>\n

Slat said his ultimate goal was to put himself out of business. \u201cMy job every day is to accelerate the death of my creation. I see this as a project, not as an ongoing business. And the sooner we figure this out, the sooner we scale up and have cleaner oceans, the better.\u201d<\/p>\n

He added: \u201cThe world needs a success story. There is a lot of pessimism, a lot of fatalism, especially among people of my generation. But if we can say, \u2018There was a time when the oceans were filled with plastic, that two thirds of the planet was polluted, and then we solved it\u2019 \u2014 I think that will be a case of action inspiring action.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The global plastic pollution crisis could be solved within 15 years and for less than $1 billion, according…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":524900,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[49,48,295,66],"class_list":{"0":"post-524899","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-environment","11":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/524899","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=524899"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/524899\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/524900"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=524899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=524899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=524899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}