20 year old Boyan Slat is an inventor who has developed a device that uses the ocean currents to skim garbage off the ocean surface. The contraption is believed to be able to clean up around 70,320,000 kg of waste over the next 10 years and is currently being tested in Japan.
This 2,000m floating line will become the longest floating structure in the world when it’s deployed in 2016
It is the first stage in 20-year-old Boyan Slat’s plan to rid the oceans of floating plastic waste
This plan involves targeting rotating ocean currents full of waste and skimming the trash from them
His goal is to eventually build a 100km floating array that could collect 70,320,000kg of plastic waste over 10 years
Slat estimates that this method would cost roughly 4.53 euros (5.04 USD) per kilogram, which is only 3% of the cost of other potential clean-up methods
