Boyan Slat is a Dutch inventor and entrepreneur. He is the founder and CEO of The Ocean Cleanup, a Dutch foundation that develops advanced systems to rid the world’s oceans of plastic.
In 2011, aged 16, Slat came across more plastic than fish while diving in Greece, and he decided to devote his high school project for deeper investigation into ocean plastic pollution and why it was considered impossible to clean up.
At the age of 18, Boyan devised a concept that utilizes the natural oceanic forces to passively catch and concentrate oceans’ plastic, thus reducing the theoretical cleanup time from millennia to years.
In February 2013, he discontinued his Aerospace Engineering studies at TU Delft to start The Ocean Cleanup.
In November 2014, Slat was awarded the Champions of the Earth award of the United Nations Environment Programme
In 2015. HM King Harald of Norway awarded Slat the Young Entrepreneur Award
Forbes included Slat in their 2016 “30 under 30” list.
In February 2017, Reader’s Digest appointed Slat European of the Year, and the Dutch magazine Elsevier awarded him Nederlander van het Jaar 2017 (Dutchman of the Year 2017)
In 2018, Slat was awarded the Leonardo da Vinci International Art Award and “European of the Year” by Euronews.
As the CEO of The Ocean Cleanup, Boyan currently leads a team of 80 people, yet he invests most of his time in Research & Engineering.
The Ocean Cleanup is a non-profit engineering organisation that develops technology to rid the world’s oceans of plastic. The technology also intercepts plastic on its way to the ocean via rivers.
The system is designed in a manner that it moves with the current, just like the plastic, so that to catch it.
Their first scalable solution is The Interceptor, which is 100% solar powered, and extracts plastic autonomously. The extracted plastic is then brought ashore and recycled.
Check on the link https://theoceancleanup.com/ to know more on how you can contribute.
Inventions like this are the need of the hour. Let’s all do our part in saving the environment while we have the chance.
Published by
Maitree Joshi