Boyan Slat, 19-year-old aerospace engineer at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, created a device to potentially clean 7,250,000 tons of plastic from the world’s oceans-proving that a mere college student can solve global problems.
It is advocated to drink eight eight-ounce glasses of water each day; however, it is not necessary to drink this water from 16-ounce plastic bottles. To see the harm of plastic pollution, just Google a picture of the United States’ very own “plastic beach” (also known as Kamilo Beach, Hawaii). In eight years, 260,000 pounds of plastic was collected from this beach during routine cleanups, according to the Hawaii Wildlife Fund. To give some perspective-on average, an empty plastic water bottle only weighs 0.03 pounds. Kamilo Beach is just one of many polluted beaches around the world, due to the five major oceanic gyres, which are rotating systems of ocean currents that essentially attract millions of tons of plastic.
No one wants to swim in plastic soup, including marine life, but recently it seems that they do not have a choice. Research by the United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration found that over 100,000 marine mammals and one million seabirds die from trash-related deaths each year. Furthermore, the University of British Columbia specifically studied the deaths of Northern Fulmars, a seabird common to the Northeast Atlantic regions. They found that 92.5 percent of the 67 birds studied had some form of plastic in their stomachs, ranging from 37 pieces per bird to 454 pieces.
Wildlife deaths and oceanic pollution can be stopped, but it is up to the public. The bottled water industry is entirely demand driven; therefore, in order to see results in the environment, the demands of the people must be altered. Some activists have displayed productive efforts, such as Concord, Massachusetts’ prohibition of the sale of plastic water bottles and the industry’s overall weight reduction of plastic bottles. However, Slat may have found the most effective solution of them all.
Slat has used his resources at Delft University of Technology to create an ocean cleanup device that could potentially remove 7,250,000 tons of plastic waste from the world’s oceans by 2020, equivalent to the weight of 1,000 Eiffel Towers. The device would move across the ocean’s garbage patches acting as a giant funnel with processing platforms to separate plankton from waste. He is currently completing a feasibility study, since many scientists and professional ocean activists have questioned the practicality of his solution. Regardless of the end result, the world has five years before they see the magic of Slat’s device, so in that time the public must recognize their responsibility to recycle, a simple act that can save hundreds of thousands of aquatic animals, reduce pollutants from building up in the food chain, and save millions of dollars in clean-up costs, lost tourism and damage to marine vessels.
Beach cleaning can be an individual act or performed with an organization, such as Clean Ocean Action, an organization that focuses on the waters of New Jersey and New York. Groups on the University’s campus provide opportunities to help as well, such as Monmouth’s chapter of the Public Relations Student Society of America and the Outdoors Club, which are co-hosting a beach cleanup on May 4 at Pier Village from 9:45 am to 12:00 pm. Additionally, 90 colleges nationwide have already banned or restricted the sale of bottled water. There are many ways to support this global change that prove just as successful as Slat’s new device.
As said by Slat in his TEDxDelft presentation, “We created this mess, we even invented this new material first before we made this mess, so please don’t tell me we can’t clean this up together.”
