Giving Compass' Take:

• The Ocean Cleanup, a nonprofit that built a floating ocean device that collects plastic trash, is currently in beta-testing, and if it works out, could dramatically help the environment. 

• Are nonprofits and other ocean-centered organizations collaborating on the best ways to help clean the ocean? 

• Read about what donors can do about plastic in the ocean. 


The crew of The Ocean Cleanup, the Netherlands-based nonprofit deploying a 2,000-foot-long floating ocean clean-up device, successfully installed the beta system into a U-shape. The system uses a huge floating pipe, with a “skirt” attached below it, both designed to move with the wind and waves collecting plastic–in theory. In practice, the device hasn’t worked yet.

“The main principle behind the cleanup system is to have a difference in speed between the system and the plastic so that it goes faster than the plastic, and you can collect it,” says Boyan Slat, CEO and founder of The Ocean Cleanup, who first conceived of the device as a teenager and then raised money to make it a reality.

What we see now, however, is that the system is not moving fast enough. There’s multiple hypotheses for that.”

The crew plans to try making the opening of the u-shape wider, so a greater surface area will be exposed to the wind and waves that push it through the water. Widening the span could also help reduce any fishtailing of the ends of the pipe, which engineers also hypothesize might be slowing it down.

The problem of speed didn’t show up in scale model tests or simulations. “It stresses why it’s so important that we’re out there now with a real system, with the real scale, because models are models, and there’s no substitute for reality,” he says

If it does ultimately work, it will be a critical step for the environment.

Read the full article about the Ocean Cleanup device by Adele Peters at Fast Company