The Ocean Clean Up
The organisation aiming to clean up 90% of floating ocean plastic pollution by 2040
What do they do?
It would be wonderfully ironic if these guys had chosen that name but actually had nothing to do with cleaning up the oceans. Luckily, that isn’t the case and they are doing exactly what they say in their name. Which I kind of love tbh - no dropped syllables like in a startup name, no random URL suffix because it’s the only one they can afford. They are called The Ocean Cleanup (I’m going to refer to them as OCU going forward because The Ocean Cleanup is a mouthful) and they’re going to clean up the oceans (and other waterways). Their goal is to get rid of 90% of floating ocean plastic by 2040. Founded in 2013 and based in Rotterdam, OCU has engineered some amazing solutions to tackle ocean floating plastic, capturing their first plastic in 2019.
How the f**k are they gonna do that?
OK, and this is one of the reasons I love this company. They have recognised a huge environmental problem (literally trillions of pieces of plastic currently pollute the ocean) and rather than throw soup at paintings or glue their hands to the road, they are going to fix it with engineering.
They have designed two systems: one for the ocean and one for rivers.
The ocean system creates an artificial coastline in this U-shape (see below). There is a boat either end pulling the “coast line” at slow speed. Plastic flows into it (but sealife doesn’t) and moves towards the retention zone in the centre. That retention zone collects all the plastic and when it’s full, it’s taken onto a ship and removed permanently from the ocean.
Rather than just taking random guesses about where the plastic might be, OCU has developed a tracking system for plastic hotspots and heads towards them. This tracking programme has, in their estimates, cut the time it’ll take to clean up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in half!
The river system uses different types of interceptors to stop plastic flowing further down river. Below is one of their interceptors in Guatemala.
There are currently 21 river interceptors deployed around the world from Malaysia to Vietnam to the Dominican Republic.
The waste is then taken out of the ocean/river and recycled.
This is amazing - who’s the mad genius behind this?
The founder is Boyan Slat who was inspired to found OCU after taking a diving trip in Greece where he saw more plastic bags than fish. His first goal was to clean up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch which alone contains 100,000 metric tons of plastic - equivalent to 1,000 Eiffel Towers. Slat dropped out of his aerospace engineering degree to focus full time on cleaning up the oceans.
OK this sounds super cool but what have they actually done so far?
Great question - we love a noble cause but if we’re going to have optimism, we have to see results. In that case, I’m happy to report that these guys are smashing it! In 2024 alone, they removed 11.5 million kg of rubbish from oceans and rivers. Lifetime, they have removed a total of 20million kg of rubbish! And what’s even better is that they are accelerating - their numbers in 2024 surpassed all other years COMBINED!! Who doesn’t love a hockey stick chart?
Nice. Now let’s talk money.
So OCU is a non-profit funded by donations and partnerships. Most of the organisations I’ll focus on in this newsletter will be for-profits coz I’m a CAPITALIST but if you think what these folks are doing is worthy, hit this DONATE button.
OCU predicts that in order to clean up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch it’ll cost $4bn and take 5 years. And that can sound like a lot but just imagine it’s 2030 and the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is gone. Just gone. Won’t that make you feel better about our world and the future?
They recycle the majority of the waste they collect that their partners process to make durable new products, for example working with Kia to create a new car trunk liner. OCU even experiments with creating some of their own products such as these snazzy sunglasses:
Why is this optimistic for the future?
This one is pretty self-explanatory I think. Climate denialism is bad but I think climate doomerism is just as bad. Choices we’ve made historically have led to pollution whether that’s atmospheric or oceanic. Rather than wring our hands about it, put on our hairshirts and demand repentance, we need to come up with solutions. OCU does exactly that - innovative new technology directly addressing a pollution problem. I mean look at this haul from just a single catch with their ocean system. I feel cleaner just knowing that’s out of my ocean.
Don’t get me wrong, there’s still a lot to do but it doesn’t it make you optimistic that someone smart and hungry is working on it? I know it does for me.
I love The Ocean CleanUp, where can I learn more?
Their website is here
Their X is here
Follow Boyan here
Check out their 2024 wrapped here
Interested in working there. Check out their open jobs
Richard
p.s. If you want to read my initial thesis for writing this newsletter, you can check it out here.