Boyan Slat, who famously developed a model for cleaning plastic out of the oceans about 2 years ago, has finally proven his project to be truly feasible. It has been a long journey, at times filled with public doubt and requiring crowd-funding efforts. The story is shown pretty well in the video above.
If you did not know: there are millions of tons of plastic in the oceans creating numerous ecological and economic problems.. Although seldom discussed, at least half of our oxygen in the air we breathe comes from small organisms (primarily phytoplankton and algae) in the ocean. These creatures that help support almost all life on Earth are threatened by the over-abundance of plastic in the oceans, in addition to radiation, climate change, and chemical dumping.
There is so much plastic in the oceans that plastic stones are washing up on beaches. Researchers have been looking for a solution, and it seems like Boyan has been able to step up to the plate. We are nearing biosphere limits (Barnosky, 2012), and our time to react grows short.
If you want to hear the story with more words, fewer images, no music, and more detail, then the video below is for you.
The only step left is for it to be applied, and there are no excuses left not to do so.