Cleaning Up the Oceans Using Sustainable Engineering

When former aerospace engineering student Boyan Slat went scuba diving in Greece, he imagined a picturesque view: tropical fish, beautiful coral reefs, and pristine water. What he did not expect to see was more plastic than fish floating in the ocean. Believing that something needed to be done, Slat dropped out of school to found TheOceanCleanup. Soon, the project he started would turn into a worldwide non-profit organization with a dedicated team, willing to clean up the major mess in the ocean that humans have made.

Keeping the garbage out of the ocean for the sake of marine life is what TheOceanCleanup has been working towards. Currently, the focus of TheOceanCleanup project is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, otherwise known as the Pacific trash vortex. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is a large gyre in the Pacific Ocean that pulls litter into its spinning currents. The trash in the vortex is not biodegradable and is mainly composed of waste that can hardly be seen by the human eye. To combat the growing rubbish in the ocean, the basis of Slat’s design includes vessels with large booms tailing it that intercept trash in the Pacific Ocean. As the vessels pull against the current, the trash is collected in a large funnel-like contraption. The funnel acts as a barrier that transports the trash to a u-shaped net, called the retention zone. Once a week, one of the vessels picks up the trash from the retention zone and dumps the contents out. The trash is then separated into different materials, packaged, and sent to a recycling center.

Taking action to eliminate the waste out of these waters is vital for mankind, as over 3 billion people around the world depend on the underwater ecosystem. When designing this build, the team of hydrodynamic and river survey engineers hailing from Europe, North America, Africa, Australia, Asia, and South America, collaborated to figure out how to simultaneously trap debris while leaving the sea creatures undisturbed so that they could swim freely. Taking this important constraint into account, Slat and his team of engineers ensured that the barrier only went down 3 meters deep, allowing for marine life to flow safely beneath.

The machines are environmentally friendly, too. The vessels can be autonomous, powered by solar panels and containing a rainwater storage system to prevent malfunctioning. These systems allow for the vessels to ride along the waters without causing harm towards the environment. TheOceanCleanup has also recently launched sunglasses made entirely out of plastic from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in order to make responsible use out of the trash they collected, thereby closing the plastic production loop. One hundred percent of the funds generated from the glasses go directly back towards funding TheOceanCleanup.

To help promote the worthy cause of cleaning our oceans and bringing attention to this crisis, YouTube content creators Mark Rober and MrBeast, who have a combined total of 106 million subscribers, created a fundraiser aiming to raise $15,000,000 for the organization. With large technology companies such as Microsoft partnering with TheOceanCleanup, they have routinely cleaned up about 50,000 kilograms of trash a day, and the organization aims to clean up 90% of pollution in the ocean by 2050.

TheOceanCleanup has gone through the challenging task of trying to rid our planet’s ocean waste, following through on what seems to be an impossible mission. Incorporating a robust, environmentally-friendly design with booms and vessels, along with key fundraising partnerships, this nonprofit exemplifies the power of what engineers from all over the world can do when they work together. With the power of engineering, these organizations have proven humanity can step up to provide solutions that will continue to benefit future generations.

Annotated Bibliography

"Great Pacific Garbage Patch." UXL Doomed: The Science Behind Disasters, edited by K. Lee Lerner, et al., vol. 1, UXL, 2015, pp. 289-296. Gale In Context: Middle School, link.gale.com/apps/doc/CX3622600042/MSICu=j079907&sid=bookmark-MSIC&xid=96b8ce07. Accessed 4 Dec. 2021.
This article details what the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is.

Rober, Mark, director. This Robot Eats Trash #TeamSeas. YouTube, YouTube, 29 Oct. 2021, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXDx6DjNLDU. Accessed 4 Dec. 2021.
This video by YouTube content creators Mark Rober and MrBeast explain their fundraising partnership with TheOceanCleanup.

S, Pangambam. “How The Oceans Can Clean Themselves by Boyan Slat at TEDxDelft (Transcript).” The Singju Post, 7 June 2020, https://singjupost.com/oceans-can-clean-boyan-slat-tedxdelft-transcript/.
This transcript of Boyan Slat’s TEDx talk explains how he conceived of TheOceanCleanup, including details of the experiments and the design of the apparatus.
Watch Slat's original talk from 2012 through TEDxDelft.

Slat, Boyan. Boyan Slat, 2019, https://boyanslat.com/index.html.
This website provides information on the background of TheOceanCleanup founder Boyan Slat and his accomplishments.

Slat, Boyan, director. How System 002 Works | Cleaning Oceans | The Ocean Cleanup. YouTube, YouTube, 19 Oct. 2021, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31gFN3vP_0g. Accessed 4 Dec. 2021.
This video about TheOceanCleanup describes its functions and explains how it is able to pick up trash.

Smith, Tierney. “Closing the Loop: Designing for a Sustainable Future.” Climate Home News, Climate Home, 23 July 2012, https://www.climatechangenews.com/2012/02/28/closing-the-loop-designing-for-a-sustainable-future/.
This article explains what ‘closing the loop’ means and illustrates examples of the phrase in action.

The Ocean Cleanup, 26 Nov. 2021, https://theoceancleanup.com/.
This is TheOceanCleanup’s website, where they detail the design of the build, their employees, their partnerships, their sunglasses, and updates behind the scenes.