As if entangling wildlife and contaminating seafood weren’t enough, ocean plastic may be sabotaging the planet’s natural defenses against climate change. A 2023 study suggests microplastics may interfere with phytoplankton, microscopic marine organisms that help oceans absorb carbon emissions. Boyan Slat, founder and CEO of nonprofit The Ocean Cleanup, aims to solve this problem by ridding the ocean of 90% of floating plastic by 2040. But, he adds, “I believe we can do it faster.”
Slat’s optimism is surprising, given the scale of the technical challenges. Its first full-scale cleanup system, launched in 2018, did not effectively capture plastic and eventually broke. “That was very annoying,” he says, “but again, we learned a lot from that.” A later version successfully caught plastic, but the team estimated it would take hundreds of such systems to reach their goal.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]Slat says those early failures helped the nonprofit land on its current, more successful formula. It places contraptions that catch would-be-ocean-plastic from rivers before it’s released into the blue. Meanwhile, ships pull a giant net that sweeps plastic from the ocean’s garbage patches—areas where currents meet, causing plastic waste to accumulate. The two-pronged approach has already seen over 19,000 tons of plastic removed since 2019. At current rates, The Ocean Cleanup estimates that it could clean the entire Pacific garbage patch, an accumulation of ocean plastic off the coast of California, for $7.5 billion. But Slat says the plan is to save money and resources by halting sea operations for a year, beginning in 2025, and to use the time to perfect its technique of predicting where clusters of ocean plastic lie.
“The broom is ready. Now it’s about knowing where to sweep,” Slat says. “We’re going to invest one year to save five.”
*Disclosure: Donors to The Ocean Cleanup include TIME co-chairs and owners Marc and Lynne Benioff.