Boyan Slat is a Dutch inventor and entrepreneur, passionate about creating megaprojects to address planetary problems. He is the founder and CEO of The Ocean Cleanup; a non-profit organization developing and scaling technologies to rid the world’s oceans of plastic.
At 16 years of age, Boyan Slat saw more plastic bags than fish when scuba diving in Greece. He thought: “Why can’t we just clean this up?” This question led him to research the plastic pollution problem for a school project. In 2012, Boyan Slat held a TEDx talk about how to rid the world’s oceans of plastic using technology. The video went viral, and the momentum that followed allowed him to drop out of school and start The Ocean Cleanup in 2013.
The organization aims to put itself out of business, with the goal of removing 90% of floating ocean plastic by 2040. They plan to do this by cleaning up the legacy plastic – the plastic already floating in the ocean – and by stopping the sources of plastic flowing into our oceans.
