At only 18 years old, he created an NGO that has already removed more than 20,000 tons of plastic from the oceans and rivers.
This is Dutch entrepreneur Boyan Slat, founder of The Ocean Cleanup.
The idea came to him at the age of 16, during a dive in Greece.
It is struck by the amount of floating waste, much greater than the number of fish.
He then discovered the existence of oceanic gyres: giant whirlpools where plastic waste accumulates and decides to act.
In 2013, he abandoned his studies, launched a crowdfunding campaign and designed a first prototype of a floating barrier, capable of capturing drifting waste in the Pacific.
After several technical failures, the NGO successfully deployed System 002 in 2021, then 03, capable of collecting up to 1,000 kg of plastic per day.
But Boyan quickly identifies another more powerful lever: 80% of marine plastic comes from only 1% of the rivers in the world.
He then developed the Interceptor, an autonomous barge capable of capturing waste directly at the source, before it reached the oceans.
Today, these machines are deployed in critical areas such as the Ganges (India), the Klang (Malaysia) or the Rio Ozama (Dominican Republic).
The waste collected is then recycled into various everyday products: glasses, furniture, construction materials…
It is still important to mention that the NGO is subsidized by one of the biggest polluters on the planet: Coca-Cola.
