Every year, millions of tonnes of rubbish end up in the sea, damaging the economy, climate, environment and ecosystems. In an evaluation carried out by the UN Environment Program in 2021, it is estimated that between 9 and 14 million tonnes of plastic end up in the sea annually. Since 2013, the Dutch organization The Ocean Cleanup has been working to not only remove plastic and other rubbish from the ocean, but also to stop the influx of more. With the help of “Interceptors” (floating barriers in estuaries that stop the garbage before it ends up in the sea) and huge nets that collect and pick up plastic, the organization has set itself the goal of removing 90% of floating ocean plastic by 2040. After ten years work, where the first collection of ocean plastic took place in 2019, the organization has collected 2,000,000,000 kilograms of ocean plastic. The big “plastic soup” Large parts of the plastic that ends up in the ocean, and which The Ocean Cleanup works to remove, end up in what we know as the big “plastic soup”, or Great Pacific Garbage Patch in English. The ocean currents in the surface waters of the North Pacific ensure that the plastic that ends up in the sea along the coastal strips collects in a vortex of garbage. The current system, or gyre, extends over an area of over 20 million square kilometers. All in all, it is impossible to determine what amounts of rubbish and plastic are in the sea, both because of the scale and because not all the plastic floats on the sea surface. Large parts of the plastic are broken down into microplastics or sink below the sea surface. Over 70% of marine plastic probably ends up on the bottom of the ocean. A Dutch study sponsored by The Ocean Cleanup states that 90% of the plastic soup in the North Pacific comes from fishing and other activities at sea. Many streams small… The Dutch Ocean Cleanup was started by Boyan Slat in 2013 after accumulating a lot of support with the help of sponsors and kickstarter campaigns. In 2019 they made their first collection of plastic, and in 2021 they were able to prove that the system can successfully collect large amounts of plastic again and again. In 2022, work began on scaling up the work. The plastic the organization collects must be recycled, and the collection work is monitored to ensure minimal or no inconvenience to ecosystems in the area. At the same time, plastic is stopped in riverbeds. The counterarguments for the project are often that marine plastic is just a drop in the ocean. But even small solutions can become big with the right attitude. “I really believe that with this technology to clean up this legacy pollution in the ocean and by stopping plastic in the rivers before it reaches the ocean, we can actually put ourselves out of business in the not too distant future,” said Boyan Slat in an interview with the BBC. Other organizations working to save the ocean’s ecosystems with technology include Ichthion and Sea Defense Solutions, while organizations such as OceanCare work with strategies and legal framework networks to make the life cycle of plastic, from when it is picked up as oil until it ends up in the ocean again, greener.
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Celebrating 10 years with 2,000,000,000 kg of ocean plastic removed
