Boyan Slat has been dreaming of cleaning up the world's oceans for a long time.
In 2010, he went on a diving (潜水) vacation in Greece and was shocked. "I saw more plastic bags than fish in the water," he said.
From then on, Slat began to pay more attention to ocean pollution. He decided to give up higher education and set up the 0cean Cleanup, a non-government organization. Its purpose is to clean up ocean rubbish. He has set up the world's first ocean cleanup system (系统) with his team.
Every year, over 8 million tons of plastic end up in our oceans, and it can take up to 500 years to break down. In 2018, the World Economic Forum predicted that the weight of ocean plastic would match that of all the fish in our oceans by 2050. Sea animals easily get caught in plastic. They can't move. They can even die if they eat it. Smaller plastic pieces can also enter the food chain (链) and end up in our bodies.
Slat's plan was to create an environmentally-friendly, large system to clear out plastic rubbish from the ocean.
After seven years of tests, on October 2nd, 2019, a machine called System 001/B came out. It successfully caught and collected a large amount of plastic rubbish floating in the ocean.
Slat and his team are working to improve System 001/B. Their dream is to clear out 90 percent of all the ocean plastic by 2040.
