Macquarie 50th Anniversary Award
The Macquarie 50th Anniversary Award funding will accelerate the critical development phase of the technology. Once the design of the ocean technology is proven, The Ocean Cleanup can begin its scale‑up to a full fleet of systems to be deployed across the GPGP and the remaining four gyres; all while they continue to move forward with tackling the top 1,000 most polluting rivers responsible for 80% of the plastic outflow.
Cost to the global economy from ocean plastic pollution
pieces of plastic littering our oceans
of plastic in the ocean expected to be removed by 2040 as part of this initiative
Research by The Ocean Cleanup shows that approximately 80 million kilograms of floating plastic debris and 1.8 trillion pieces of microplastic are distributed across the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (GPGP). This is an area that’s three times the size of France, located between California and Hawaii, and the largest accumulation of ocean garbage in the world.
The Ocean Cleanup has also established that 1,000 of the world’s rivers are responsible for roughly 80 percent of riverine garbage entering the oceans.
The organisation is developing technological solutions to rid our world’s oceans of plastic by not only cleaning up existing waste, but preventing new plastic from entering the ocean. One is a passive ocean cleanup system to remove existing plastic pollution; and the second is the Interceptor™, a river system that intercepts plastic from rivers before it enters the ocean.
The Ocean Cleanup aims to remove 50 per cent of the GPGP every five years. Its longer-term goal is to rid all oceans of 90 per cent of floating plastic by 2040 and to tackle the world’s 1,000 most polluting rivers five years from rollout.
In FY2021, The Ocean Cleanup successfully launched a new River Interceptor 004 in the Dominican Republic, stemming the flow of plastic before it gets out to sea.
In FY2022, The Ocean Cleanup made substantial progress in their mission to rid the world’s oceans and rivers of plastic, pioneering ground-breaking research, reaching proof of technology with their latest ocean system (System 002, aka Jenny), and deploying new interceptor solutions that prevent plastic from entering the ocean from rivers in Dominican Republic, Malaysia, Jamaica and Vietnam.
The Ocean Cleanup are on a mission to rid the world’s oceans of plastic. They made this their mission because they believe that the health of our oceans is essential for all life on Earth to prosper.
"Plastic continues to destroy ecosystems and economies, and has potentially damaging effects on human health on a big scale. More than three billion people rely on fish as their primary source of protein and tipping plastic into the ocean ends up in the food chain, with associated health consequences. We started The Ocean Cleanup to develop the tools for humanity to be able to solve this problem."
Boyan Slat, CEO and Founder, The Ocean Cleanup
