A 23-year-old inventor has figured out how to clean the Pacific Ocean from plastic garbage in 5 years

Boyan Slat is a 23—year-old Dutch inventor and entrepreneur. He started designing and building at the age of two, and at 14 he already set a Guinness World Record by launching 213 pneumohydraulic (or just water) rockets at the same time. However, now the young genius has much grander plans — he is going to clean the world's oceans of plastic garbage.

In 2011, during a vacation in Greece, Boyan was struck by the fact that there is almost more garbage in Greek waters than fish. After that, he devoted all his time to solving the problem of pollution of the oceans and dropped out of school. Two years later, he founded The Ocean Cleanup company and presented a plan to clean the waters using ocean currents. After speaking at TEDx Talk, the young genius raised $ 2.2 million for his invention.

At first, Boyan tested his development in the waters of Japan, but then focused on the so-called Great Pacific Garbage Patch, whose area reaches from 700 thousand to 1.5 million square kilometers. Slat plans to clear the Pacific Ocean of plastic in 5 years.

Since 2014, The Ocean Cleanup organization has been carefully studying the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in order to deploy a full-scale water purification operation in 2020.

Boyan Slat.

In 2013, he founded The Ocean Cleanup company and, having raised money for a startup, sent an expedition to get accurate data on the problem of ocean pollution.