“If we were logical, the future would be bleak, indeed.
But we are more than logical. We are human beings,
and we have faith, and we have hope, and we can work.”
Jacques Yves Cousteau

Boyan Slat stands before thousands of pounds of ocean garbage.

There’s an amazing 20-year-old Dutch by the name of Boyan Slat who is on a mission. He’s had this mission since he was 16-years old when he first was exposed to ocean garbage during a diving vacation in Greece. The teenager was stunned to see that there was more plastic on the beaches than fishes in the sea.

He was in college on his way to becoming an Aerospace Engineer, but he could never erase the images of the plastic debris from his mind. Slat dropped out of college and established The Ocean Cleanup Foundation. Its mission is to create an environmentally friendly large-scale and efficient way to remove the trillions of pieces of plastic polluting aquatic ecosystems and killing our marine life. Plastic debris that kills about a million seabirds and over one hundred thousand marine animals each year.

The way the Foundation plans to clean up the oceans is by using a system of strategically placed floating barriers that will collect the plastic brought in by the ocean currents, similar to how the waves bring garbage to shore. Since the system does not require nets, there is no chance of harming wildlife in the process.

He even has plans for all the collected plastic. It will be recycled into oil, which can be sold to help offset some of the costs associated with the project.

When most 20-year-olds don’t even know what they plan to do with their life, this young passionate entrepreneur is already making his impact on the world. What started as an outlandish dream by one determined teenage, may actually come to fruition. A dream to successfully clean up our oceans.

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