Red Mosquito

Teenager’s Invention Could Clean Oceans of Garbage Within 5 Years



A lot of buzz has been generated surrounding a TED talk given by a Dutch teenager. 19 Year old Boyan Slat is spearheading an initiative which aims to clean the world’s oceans in an efficient way. His concept involves using booms and processing facilities to collect plastic while allowing fish and plankton to pass freely.

The prospective project could potentially collect as much as 16 billion lbs of plastic from each ocean gyre over a period of 5 years. The plastic could then be sold and re-used according to the projects website.

His TED Talk:

I've long believed that the potential for changing human behavior on a mass scale was essentially zero, and that our best hopes for the future will lie in our exponentially expanding scientific abilities.

But it's nice to sometimes feel like that's not just a case of crossing your fingers.