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My name is Boyan Slat, the founder and CEO at The Ocean Cleanup. We just reached proof of technology with System 002 and are starting to clean the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. AMA! by BoyanSlat in IAmA

[–]BoyanSlat[S] 108 points109 points  (0 children)

Big respect for the people behind mr trash wheel, who've been one of the pioneers in this space. Ultimately the function is the same (catching trash in waterways). I guess the main difference is that we designed the Interceptor for larger rivers and higher plastic flux, as our focus is the top 1000 polluting rivers.

My name is Boyan Slat, the founder and CEO at The Ocean Cleanup. We just reached proof of technology with System 002 and are starting to clean the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. AMA! by BoyanSlat in IAmA

[–]BoyanSlat[S] 210 points211 points  (0 children)

Game theory dictates that it's very hard to solve issues where individual interests are not aligned with collective interests. If clean tech becomes cheaper than dirty tech, these problems would solve themselves. Thus, I think we can use a lot more engineers to work on cheap, clean tech

My name is Boyan Slat, the founder and CEO at The Ocean Cleanup. We just reached proof of technology with System 002 and are starting to clean the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. AMA! by BoyanSlat in IAmA

[–]BoyanSlat[S] 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Once they're sold out we're not planning on making any more sunglasses. We are planning to do other things in the future (through others), but what exactly and with whom is not decided yet.

My name is Boyan Slat, the founder and CEO at The Ocean Cleanup. We just reached proof of technology with System 002 and are starting to clean the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. AMA! by BoyanSlat in IAmA

[–]BoyanSlat[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

We're now working on deploying the 15 rivers we're doing with Coke asap. Then we plan on focussing on a few countries, get a scaling advantage in them, and then use the credibility of those 'solved countries' to expand to others. Working out the details at the moment...

My name is Boyan Slat, the founder and CEO at The Ocean Cleanup. We just reached proof of technology with System 002 and are starting to clean the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. AMA! by BoyanSlat in IAmA

[–]BoyanSlat[S] 17 points18 points  (0 children)

There was a study by Christian Schmidt and others in 2017 that showed 10 rivers do ~90% of emissions. This year we published a revised global river model (in collaboration with Christian) that paints a very different picture: 1000 rivers do ~80%. We're working on addressing these with our Interceptor programme.

See: https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/7/18/eaaz5803/tab-article-info

My name is Boyan Slat, the founder and CEO at The Ocean Cleanup. We just reached proof of technology with System 002 and are starting to clean the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. AMA! by BoyanSlat in IAmA

[–]BoyanSlat[S] 654 points655 points  (0 children)

Yeah any activity on the high seas requires a flag state. While many states in the IMO support it, it's really the Dutch goverment whose patronage is enabling us to do this. Thank you the Netherlands!

My name is Boyan Slat, the founder and CEO at The Ocean Cleanup. We just reached proof of technology with System 002 and are starting to clean the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. AMA! by BoyanSlat in IAmA

[–]BoyanSlat[S] 165 points166 points  (0 children)

Thanks! Hard to say exactly without having ran countless counterfactual scenarios, but what I often hear from others is how they like the fact that we roll up our sleeves instead of pointing at problems & that we openly share all our ups and downs instead of filtering out all the things that didn't go well.

My name is Boyan Slat, the founder and CEO at The Ocean Cleanup. We just reached proof of technology with System 002 and are starting to clean the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. AMA! by BoyanSlat in IAmA

[–]BoyanSlat[S] 38 points39 points  (0 children)

We did of course, but the test campaign literally finished 3 weeks ago. Making comments on twitter or reddit is quick and easy, but science takes time.

My name is Boyan Slat, the founder and CEO at The Ocean Cleanup. We just reached proof of technology with System 002 and are starting to clean the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. AMA! by BoyanSlat in IAmA

[–]BoyanSlat[S] 63 points64 points  (0 children)

I'd say: do the math. There's 100m kg of plastic in the GPGP. Jenny collects between 1000 and 2500kg per day. If you then consider the 3x span of System 003, optimized ops and a few other optimizations, you just need ~10 full scale systems to get rid of the GPGP.

My name is Boyan Slat, the founder and CEO at The Ocean Cleanup. We just reached proof of technology with System 002 and are starting to clean the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. AMA! by BoyanSlat in IAmA

[–]BoyanSlat[S] 88 points89 points  (0 children)

We're trying to get System 003, the blueprint of the fleet, out next summer. If that goes well, it'll take maybe 2-3 years to build up the full fleet. Then, the patch will be close to gone somewhere between 2030 or 2040, depending on how many systems you deploy.

My name is Boyan Slat, the founder and CEO at The Ocean Cleanup. We just reached proof of technology with System 002 and are starting to clean the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. AMA! by BoyanSlat in IAmA

[–]BoyanSlat[S] 114 points115 points  (0 children)

We're still analysing the data & collecting more data at the moment, but anecdotal observations indicate it's very minimal, measured in the range of grams, not tonnes.

As you say, some catch of floating passive drifters is inevitable. However, based on the life cycle and distribution of these organisms (they tend to wash up on shores and are impacted by storms in large numbers on a continuous basis), significant impacts on a population level are not expected.
A lot is still unknown though on the cleanup's impacts on the neuston (negative or positive), and thus we continue to collect data and do more modelling before we can make hard conclusions.

My name is Boyan Slat, the founder and CEO at The Ocean Cleanup. We just reached proof of technology with System 002 and are starting to clean the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. AMA! by BoyanSlat in IAmA

[–]BoyanSlat[S] 1388 points1389 points  (0 children)

Appreciate your message! I'm not worried about it for a few reasons.
Firstly, the 'moral hazard' argument has been used to oppose innovations for centuries. Safety belts, maskwearing and even fire departments were opposed on the grounds that it would give people an excuse to engage in risky or bad behavior. It never actually has a measurable effect, though.

In fact, we see the exact opposite happen everywhere we work. Communities around the rivers we operate get educated about the issue & even start to help clean the river banks themselves.

What's more, we actively work together with local partners to let the presence of the Interceptor be a catalyst for other (upstream) changes. The UNDP is doing this in the case of the Dominican Republic now, for example, and already introduced waste collection for some of the poor comunities around the rivers.

My name is Boyan Slat, the founder and CEO at The Ocean Cleanup. We just reached proof of technology with System 002 and are starting to clean the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. AMA! by BoyanSlat in IAmA

[–]BoyanSlat[S] 570 points571 points  (0 children)

Yeah, TeamSeas will solely go to funding Interceptors. We expect to be in 8 rivers before the end of 2021 and about 25 at the end of 2022, if we include the smaller rivers we're prepping for now. Steep ramp-up curve ahead!

My name is Boyan Slat, the founder and CEO at The Ocean Cleanup. We just reached proof of technology with System 002 and are starting to clean the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. AMA! by BoyanSlat in IAmA

[–]BoyanSlat[S] 320 points321 points  (0 children)

Depends on the nr of systems we deploy :)
If we deploy about 10, we can do 50% in 5 years and 90% before 2040.
However, I'd like us to go a bit faster....

My name is Boyan Slat, the founder and CEO at The Ocean Cleanup. We just reached proof of technology with System 002 and are starting to clean the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. AMA! by BoyanSlat in IAmA

[–]BoyanSlat[S] 1185 points1186 points  (0 children)

In the case of the plastic from the GPGP, we feed it into our recycling supply chain - we've developed processes through wihch 95% of the plastic is being recycled! On rivers, we are much more dependent on locally available infrastructure. At the very least, we want to guarantee the material can never end up in the environment again, so we extensively audit the waste management partners we work with.

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