Cleaning plastic from the ocean using the flow of ocean currents (2017)

Thus began Slat’s obsession with plastic waste, an obsession that eventually culminated in the creation of The Ocean Cleanup, arguably the first foundation of its kind to blend environmentalism with the “disruptive” logic of Silicon Valley. Simple math reinforces Eriksen’s point: The Ocean Cleanup’s moonshot goal of eradicating the GPGP within five years would successfully remove nearly 200,000 tons of plastic from the ocean, but in that same time period an additional 50 million tons of new plastic waste will have more than replaced it. Over the summer, The Ocean Cleanup revealed a new aspect of its long-term business strategy: branding opportunities for companies such as Apple or Microsoft to sponsor individual booms and monitor live data on how much plastic they are collecting, an idea that sounds less like a revolutionary environmental project and more like the stuff of satire.

Source: bostonreview.net