INNOVATION Boyan Slat


is one to watch in the 2020s


This industry needs more young entrants with an entrepreneurial streak such as Boyan Slat’s. It is for his vision and entrepreneurial spirit that IIMS has marked Boyan Slat out as one to watch in the 2020s.


Boyan Slat, CEO of The Ocean Cleanup, the Dutch non-profit organization developing advanced technologies to rid the world’s oceans of plastic, late last year unveiled his invention to prevent the unrelenting flow of plastic pollution into the world’s oceans. The Interceptor™, under development by Boyan Slat’s The Ocean Cleanup since 2015, complements the organization’s founding mission by attacking the flow of plastic garbage at its source, the world’s vast network of rivers.


“To truly rid the oceans of plastic, we need to both clean up the legacy and close the tap, preventing more plastic from reaching the oceans in the first place. Combining our ocean cleanup technology with the


36 | The Report • March 2020 • Issue 91


Interceptor™, the solutions now exist to address both sides of the equation,” said Boyan Slat.


The Interceptor™ is the first scalable solution to intercept river plastic pollution and can be deployed around the world. It is capable of extracting 50,000 kg of trash per day – even reaching 100,000 kg per day under optimized conditions.


Four Interceptors™ have been built to-date; two systems are already operational in Jakarta (Indonesia) and Klang (Malaysia). A third system is in Vietnam to be installed in Can Tho in the Mekong Delta (Vietnam), while the fourth is destined to be deployed in Santo Domingo (Dominican Republic). In addition to these locations, Thailand has signed up


to deploy an Interceptor™ near Bangkok, and further agreements are nearing completion including one in LA County (USA), kick- starting the scale-up.


A scalable and affordable solution to address a global problem


As part of The Ocean Cleanup’s research to map the problem, it was established that 1,000 of the world’s 100,000 rivers (1%) are responsible for roughly 80 percent of the garbage entering the oceans – yes Pareto’s 80/20 principle is alive and thriving still, although even more extreme in this example! The product of their global scientific measurement and modeling efforts has been visualized in an interactive map that is accessible here.


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