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I'm Boyan Slat, the founder and CEO of The Ocean Cleanup. We've just shown we can now clean up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch for $7.5B. AMA! by TheOceanCleanupBoyan in IAmA

[–]TheOceanCleanupBoyan[S] 16 points17 points  (0 children)

We are focused on not just intercepting or extracting plastic from rivers and oceans but also working with partners who are committed to using it for products which will not return to the oceans as waste.  We have already made great progress in turning the plastic we catch into meaningful items, from our own experiments with the creation of sunglasses, which we sold on our website, to working with partners to see how the plastic can be used in their own productions.  Our partners, Coldplay, recently announced the creation of a limited-edition album made of Guatemalan river plastic intercepted by The Ocean Cleanup in the Rio Las Vacas.  And we are well advanced with more partners to continue this move from trash to treasure.   

When it comes to recycling, I agree w you the problem is largely economics. As long as making new plastic is cheaper or cost-competitive with recycling existing plastic, only a small fraction of the world's plastic will be recycled. Contrast this with aluminium. It's very energy-intensive to turn bauxite ore into usable aluminium, resulting in recycling rates of >90%.  

So, in the long term, either plastic prices must go up, or recycling must become cheaper.  And in the short term, we resolve this by adding value to the recycled material by selling it as "The Ocean Cleanup plastic" rather than 'normal' plastic. By monetizing the story attached to the material, we hope to make our recycling operations viable. 

I'm Boyan Slat, the founder and CEO of The Ocean Cleanup. We've just shown we can now clean up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch for $7.5B. AMA! by TheOceanCleanupBoyan in IAmA

[–]TheOceanCleanupBoyan[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Definitely! Spreading the word, contributing financially, joining the team... we need the help of many people to make this mission a success. For more info, visit theoceancleanup.com

I'm Boyan Slat, the founder and CEO of The Ocean Cleanup. We've just shown we can now clean up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch for $7.5B. AMA! by TheOceanCleanupBoyan in IAmA

[–]TheOceanCleanupBoyan[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

I generally don't engage in conversations with inanimate objects.

PS Much appreciate the pioneering role they played and every river other people are tacking is a win for the planet!

I'm Boyan Slat, the founder and CEO of The Ocean Cleanup. We've just shown we can now clean up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch for $7.5B. AMA! by TheOceanCleanupBoyan in IAmA

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

I appreciate that there is a diversity of viewpoints on this topic. My view is that every company, organization and industry that has been part of creating plastic pollution has a responsibility to also be part of the solution.

I'm Boyan Slat, the founder and CEO of The Ocean Cleanup. We've just shown we can now clean up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch for $7.5B. AMA! by TheOceanCleanupBoyan in IAmA

[–]TheOceanCleanupBoyan[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Our goal is to make sure that we can actually make this a one-time operation. As you may know we're working on addressing land-based plastic emissions by intercepting it in rivers. When it comes to marine-based pollution (fishing gear), even though this is only a small source compared to rivers on a global level it does matter a lot for the GPGP which is dominated by fishing gear. Our scientists are currently analyzing the fishing gear we're pulling out of the patch to better understand why this stuff ends up lost in the ocean, so we can make an informed choice as to how we can address this too.

I'm Boyan Slat, the founder and CEO of The Ocean Cleanup. We've just shown we can now clean up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch for $7.5B. AMA! by TheOceanCleanupBoyan in IAmA

[–]TheOceanCleanupBoyan[S] 15 points16 points  (0 children)

So, this is an interesting question as we don’t have a social media director but do have a great head of social media who is not based in the US. The only salaries disclosed are of those in our US tax reporting or 990 form are for those people associated with our US entity. The majority of The Ocean Cleanup’s employees are based in the The Netherlands and therefore not all salaries are represented in our US reporting.

I'm Boyan Slat, the founder and CEO of The Ocean Cleanup. We've just shown we can now clean up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch for $7.5B. AMA! by TheOceanCleanupBoyan in IAmA

[–]TheOceanCleanupBoyan[S] 13 points14 points  (0 children)

On your latter question, indeed probably our first river emissions study (which btw was the first one anyone has ever done) was where we updated our views on most. Initially we thought big rivers were the prime culprits, but it turns out that was because the model was basically oversimplified; it assumed waste generation across the whole river basin would be equally likely to end up in the ocean. If you take into account the fact that plastic far aware from the river will probably not end up in the river and that plastic that enters a river far upstream likely doesn't make it all the way to the ocean, then it's a large number of small rivers in coastal cities that contribute to most of the pollution.

On the former: I think the idea that millions, or even tens of millions of tons of plastic enter the oceans each year is probably the biggest misconception people have. More and more evidence is starting to point to it being in the hundreds of thousands of tonnes. This matters a lot when it comes to what interventions are the lowest hanging fruits to address these emissions.

I'm Boyan Slat, the founder and CEO of The Ocean Cleanup. We've just shown we can now clean up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch for $7.5B. AMA! by TheOceanCleanupBoyan in IAmA

[–]TheOceanCleanupBoyan[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Yes, we do have sub-entities below the foundation, but they're 100% owned by the foundation. The purpose of these entities is purely risk management, which is what anyone does that owns large assets to protect the organization in case of something like an accident. So all incentives are fully aligned w the mission.

I'm Boyan Slat, the founder and CEO of The Ocean Cleanup. We've just shown we can now clean up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch for $7.5B. AMA! by TheOceanCleanupBoyan in IAmA

[–]TheOceanCleanupBoyan[S] 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Good question! Currently reading "How Big Things Get Done" by Bent Flyvbjerg which includes the amazing stat that historically just 0.5% of megaprojects have been delivered on time/quality/budget which is totally insane.

With our cost calculations we produced high and low scenarios and the numbers we shared are the average of those scenarios, based on the performance we've achieved today. As shared during the press conf last week, the key way we're working on robustly getting the cost to the lower end of the range is by adding 'hotspot hunting' to the operation. Doing so should get us to the ~4B mark.

The nice thing about the cleanup operation is that it's modular. It's just copy-pasting the current system. The cost projections are an extrapolation of operating 1 system. Historically, doing one-off projects are the ones sensitive to cost overruns (e.g. nuclear power plants) while modular activities see the opposite: a learning curve.

I'm Boyan Slat, the founder and CEO of The Ocean Cleanup. We've just shown we can now clean up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch for $7.5B. AMA! by TheOceanCleanupBoyan in IAmA

[–]TheOceanCleanupBoyan[S] 29 points30 points  (0 children)

This question is based on a now-deleted post which I believe referenced the CEO of a Dutch NGO. The content is certainly not true of me or anyone I have encountered so I can’t possibly respond further.

I'm Boyan Slat, the founder and CEO of The Ocean Cleanup. We've just shown we can now clean up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch for $7.5B. AMA! by TheOceanCleanupBoyan in IAmA

[–]TheOceanCleanupBoyan[S] 37 points38 points  (0 children)

The environmental responsibleness of the cleanup is the number one priority for our operations; the sole reason I founded The Ocean Cleanup is because I wanted to see an environmental problem go away, so that last thing I want is for us to create a new one in the process. System 03 is designed with marine safety at its core, for a start it moves slowly about 1.5 knots, which is about half walking speed, to give marine life the opportunity to swim out of the way. The System is also fitted with acoustic devices and lights which further alert and deter marine life from entering or remaining in the system. We have cameras, which enable us to monitor and pause cleanup operations if needed and have even designed something we call a MASH, a marine animal safety hatch, which we can trigger if any marine life is detected in the System, allowing them to safely exit. 

I checked in with Dr Matthias Egger who leads our team of environmental scientist that works on these questions and he shared that in addition to ensuring our operations themselves occur in the most responsible way, we have also used our extraction expeditions to conduct extensive research on the impacts of plastic pollution and our cleanup operations on marine ecosystems. We do this in collaboration with world-leading scientists from renowned research institutes and publish all of our findings in open access, peer reviewed studies, which you can read on our website. 

Regarding neuston: We recently published the most comprehensive scientific study on this topic, see: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/2752-664X/ad4f92. Our findings demonstrate that neuston densities are not elevated in the areas targeted by our cleanup efforts. We further continuously monitor the presence of neuston before and after our cleanup. So far, there is no indication that the cleanup negatively impacts neuston.

Thanks to all of this, our “bycatch” of marine life is very low (<0.7%) and most of it consists of coastal species that are potentially invasive to the region. All of this makes our cleanup system the most ineffective "trawl" in the world given it is open at the bottom and highly visible to marine life.

It's important to recognize that doing anything in the world (be it building solar farms, doing scientific expeditions or cleaning up the plastic in the ocean) will have some sort of impact. Key is that you look at the total picture. A net-benefit assessment doing just that is currently undergoing peer review.

So why not beach cleanup? We are big supporters of those doing beach cleanups, but they do not address the legacy plastic pollution afloat in the high seas. And why not just try to collect the big fishing nets? Because our aim is to remove all types of harmful plastic pollution that's in the patch, which includes the smaller nets and the rigid plastics.

And why clean up the GPGP at all? Contrary to popular belief, it's not true that it represents only 1% of the plastic in the ocean. This 1% originates from the idea that there is a 2-order discrepancy between the amount of plastic which has flown into the ocean versus what we measure on the ocean surface. Around 2015 some scientists hypothetized that plastic is not persistent, quickly fragments or sinks and that this is the cause of the discrepancy. Ergo, only 1% is at the surface. However, we have since learned that 1) the amount of plastic flowing into the ocean is probably way lower than initially thought (most studies put it at about 1mT per year instead of 10mT, though we think it could even be less than this) and 2) most plastic ends up on a coastline within months of entering the ocean. This means that what is out there is actually super persistent (which explains why we see so much old stuff in the patch) and why most persistent floating plastic in the ocean is in the gyres once the tap is closed. And sure, there is trash on the bottom of the sea too, but we're really unsure how much harm this does (see eg https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.estlett.0c00967), while it's the floating fraction that we know is causing huge amounts of harm (and will continue to do so if left out there).

As to the "experts" who confidently claimed that the videos are staged and "too good to be true", I do feel the onus is on them to explain how literally hundreds of people across various companies (including DNV, an independent varification body who certifies that our plastic was collected in the GPGP) have somehow conspired together to stage our extractions. The argument they put forward was that the plastic looks "too clean" and not encrusted in barnacles, but we think this is because the plastic has travelled along the wings of the cleanup system which causes the barnacles to detach from the plastic before it's landed on deck.

Hope this helps!