19 Year Old Develops A New Technology To Clean The Ocean of Plastic!

 19-year-old Boyan Slat combines environmentalism, entrepreneurism and technology to tackle global issues of sustainability.After diving in Greece, frustrated by coming across more plastic bags than fish, he wondered; why can't we clean this up?

While still being on secondary school, he then decided to dedicate half a year of research to
understand the plastic pollution and the problems associated with cleaning it up. This ultimately led to the passive clean-up concept, which he presented at TEDxDelft 2012.
    We humans are surely the architects of our own demise. What made us say this? Have you ever noticed what we are doing to the nature around us? How we are damaging it and polluting it with everything that is at our disposable.

You would be surprised to know but we have been dumping plastic and other stuff into the ocean for quite sometime now, almost 50 years to be precise, and that up till now about 600 billion metric ton plastic has been produced. A huge number of seabirds and fish have died because of the poisoning and the fishing industry is incurring damages that exceed millions of dollars per year. A survey conducted at the European seafloor off the coast of Europe concludes that the garbage pile is only 4.5 km below the surface now.
Working to prove the feasibility of his concept, Boyan Slat currently gives lead to a team of about 100 people, and temporarily quit his Aerospace Engineering study to completely focus his efforts on The Ocean Cleanup.
In 2012, The Ocean Cleanup Array has been awarded Best Technical Design at the Delft University of Technology, and became second at the iSea sustainable innovation award by the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment. Boyan Slat has been recognized as one of the 20 Most Promising Young Entrepreneurs Worldwide (Intel EYE50).

    How do we clean up this mess? The idea presented by a 19 year old, Boyan Slat, was so powerful that the youngster went and started a company by the name of The Ocean Cleanup.Slat’s idea revolves around deploying several V-shaped floating barriers that would be moored to the seabed and placed in the path of major ocean currents. The V barriers have 30 mile long arms that are designed to catch buoyant garbage and trash floating three meters below the surface while allowing sea life to pass underneath. Computer simulations show that if this method, costing 31.7 million Euros, is implemented then in the next ten years the Great Pacific Garbage Patch can be reduced by 50%.
This particular approach is, still with the cost that it will incur, surprisingly 33 times cheaper as compared to all other clean up methods that are available.

The method also does not endanger any wildlife and has been tested at the Azores Islands where it deemed successful. The collected plastic can be subsequently converted to oil.
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