Engineering
Boyan Slat
Founder of The Ocean Cleanup
Born 1994
Photo: DWDD · CC BY 3.0
Boyan Slat founded The Ocean Cleanup at eighteen to remove plastic from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch using floating barriers that let currents do the collecting. The organisation now also intercepts plastic in rivers before it reaches the sea.
Key achievements
- Founded The Ocean Cleanup at 18 with 300 euros
- Built systems that have removed millions of kilos of plastic
- Deployed river Interceptors to stop plastic reaching the sea
Universities
Delft
Began an aerospace engineering degree in 2013 and left after six months to work on ocean plastic full time.
Facts
- The idea came from a diving holiday in Greece where he saw more plastic bags than fish.
- He presented the concept in a school project and then a TEDx talk, which was viewed widely enough to fund the first research.
- His river interceptors are now deployed in several countries, targeting the waterways that carry most plastic to the ocean.
Photographs
Photographs come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences; the author and licence are shown on each image.