I've Always been a maker.
First, of course, things like treehouses zip
lines and eventually it turned more into
rockets and explosives.
I always have my projects
but they weren't for useful.
That really changed when I found this problem.
My name is Boyan Slat
and this is how I changed the world.
When I was 16 years old I was scuba
diving in Greece
and I saw more plastic bags
than fish and I wondered,
"why can't we just clean this up?"
As a high school science project.
I chose to enter this problem
and by everyone told me it would be impossible
to clean up.
I then enrolled at the University of
Delft started studying aerospace
engineering and at some point in time I had to
make the choice am I going to fully focus
on the university right now
or on this clean up project.
And I thought well it's a high risk project
but if you don't try there's zero chance for
this to happen.
When I made the decision to drop out my parents
questioned me about it.
I think I had some good arguments.
I think I'm thankful that they let me
choose a more unconventional path.
There was no money for this.
I had 300 euros of pocket
money saved up.
I think all of that we just spent on the registration
of the foundation
and then I tried to do fundraising.
And back then I really didn't know what it was doing.
I wrote an email to a few hundred companies
asking for sponsorship.
I think only one replied
and that person said,
"Well this is a terrible idea
and go back to school this is rubbish.
It's never going to work." So that
wasn't a very successful fundraising attempt
but then fortunately eventually we tried the crowdfunding
which was massively successful
and that then allowed us to get started.
Nobody ever deployed a structure of this scale
on the ocean aimed at collecting plastic.
So the tricky thing was that we
had to find out how to do
this along the way.
My observation has been that bad ideas
usually get more complicated over time while
good ideas get simpler over time.
The original idea was about the seabed doesn't
move while the water at the surface
moves. We can use this differences speak
to them collect the plastic.
However the forces on
the system because they were fixed
to the seabed were so vast that
these anchor lines had to be extremely complicated.
We had several hundred lines
to the seabed in water
5 kilometers deep.
The number of lines we used would
be able to circumvent the globe.
It just became more complicated the
further we went solving that problem.
The team wasn't positive
about the chances of success.
It was just really, um, really
tough.
It's not like software where you simply
change a few lines of code.
You're talking about big structures hundreds
of thousands of euros apiece so
if something goes wrong it's it's
really rather annoying.
I remember the moment that I was convinced that
we had to change.
I believe it was actually two interns that
were doing a master thesis that
first suggested to go
to a drifting design.
Those clean up systems gravitate
towards those areas
with the highest density of plastic.
It was such a beautiful simple
principle.
Within five minutes I was sold
and said, "Let's pivot the design
and let's go in this direction."
After five long years
of research and development
and expeditions and prototypes
now finally this September we're launching
the world's first ocean cleanup system.
If we were to deploy a fleet of 60 of
these kind of systems we expect
to be able to clean up half this Great
Pacific Garbage Patch every five
years.
Once those clean up systems are out there
we want them to be able to pay for themselves.
So we take the plastic out,
bring to land,
and we turn it back into high
quality desirable products
that people can buy
and with that they will be able
to fund the cleanup.
To be able to put off
a project like this.
I think one of the most important things
is that you have to be really obsessive
and passionate about what you do.
You will have to commit for the next five
or 10 years
this being basically the only thing you're doing
for that period of time.
If you're not truly obsessed it's
not going to happen.