Sometimes, my inspiration well is feeling a little dry. During times like that, I turn to people with incredible stories and ideas, like Boyan Slat. Boyan Slat is a 19 year old Dutch youth, winner of “Best Technical Design 2012” from Delft University of Technology, and the mastermind behind an incredible ocean clean-up array that could potentially remove 7,250,000 tons of plastic from our oceans in five years. Wow. What were you doing when you were 19?
Although I am fuzzy on some of the minute details of Slat’s plan (such as what will happen to all the plastic once it is removed), it essentially goes like this:
-Fix massive booms attached to manta ray-like arrays to the ocean floor (allowing the rotating currents to move through the booms rather than expend energy to move through the ocean).
-Use net-free booms to collect plastic (down to the tiniest granule) that result in almost no by-catch
-Use solar and wind energy to power the arrays so they can maneuver through the water without expending energy
-Collect the plastic (and put it where? This is the part that isn’t crystal clear to me)
-Sell the plastic back to the market (which he estimates to be worth over $500 million)
Yes, there are still kinks to work out in Slat’s plan. Yes, the feasibility study he is conducting has a long way to go. But, you know what? I think he’ll do it. He has the passion; he has the vision. Slat (and other visionaries like him) give me hope to keep going, to keep trying. Watch this, and be inspired:
Author: KateBitters
Kate Bitters is a Minneapolis-based author and freelance writer. She is the author of Elmer Left, Ten Thousand Lines, and He Found Me. One of her proudest/nerdiest moments was when Neil Gaiman read one of her short stories on stage at the Fitzgerald Theater.