Boyan Slat

Boyan Slat
Slat in 2018
Born (1994-07-27) 27 July 1994 (age 32)
Delft, Netherlands
OccupationsInventor, entrepreneur
Known forThe Ocean Cleanup
AwardsThiel Fellowship
Websitetheoceancleanup.com/boyan-slat/

Boyan Slat (born 27 July 1994) is a Dutch inventor and entrepreneur. A former aerospace engineering student, he is the CEO of The Ocean Cleanup.

Initial interest in plastic pollution

In 2011, Slat went scuba diving in Greece and found that the amount of plastic surpassed the number of fish in the area he explored. He made ocean plastic pollution the subject of a high school project examining why it was considered nearly impossible to clean up. He later came up with the idea of building a passive plastic catchment system, using circulating ocean currents to net plastic waste, which he presented at a TEDx talk in Delft in 2012.

Slat discontinued his aerospace engineering studies at TU Delft to devote his time to developing his idea. He founded The Ocean Cleanup in 2013, and shortly after, his TEDx talk went viral after being shared on several news sites. In 2017, Slat wrote in The Economist: "Technology is the most potent agent of change. It is an amplifier of our human capabilities ... Whereas other change-agents rely on reshuffling the existing building blocks of society, technological innovation creates entirely new ones, expanding our problem-solving tool-range."

The Ocean Cleanup

In 2013 Slat founded the non-profit The Ocean Cleanup, of which he is the CEO. The group's mission is to develop advanced technologies to rid the world's oceans of plastic. It raised US$2.2 million through a crowd funding campaign with the help of 38,000 donors from 159 countries. In June 2014, the Ocean Cleanup published a 528-page feasibility study about the project's potential. Some declared the concept unfeasible in a technical critique of the feasibility study on the Deep Sea News website, which was cited by other publications, including Popular Science and The Guardian.

Ever since The Ocean Cleanup started, the organization has raised tens of millions of dollars in donations from entrepreneurs in Europe and in Silicon Valley, including Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce. In 2026, The Ocean Cleanup was announced as one of The Audacious Project's grantees and was awarded US$121 million to go towards its 30 Cities Program.

Cleanup systems

The first and second systems, dubbed Systems 001 and 001/B respectively, encountered various technical failures. System 001 was unable to effectively retain plastic and suffered structural stress damage that caused an 18-meter section to break off at one point. However, in 2019, System 001/B, which was a redesign of System 001, successfully captured plastic. This first mission (which includes both systems) returned 60 bags of garbage. In 2022, an updated version of the technology, System 002, removed over 62,000 lbs of plastic. Following the return of System 03 in 2024, the organization announced it had removed over a million pounds of plastic from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

The Interceptor

Interceptor 007 in Los Angeles, California.

At an unveiling of a new cleanup system dubbed the Interceptor, Slat cited research from the company which showed that 1,000 of the world's most polluted rivers were responsible for roughly 80% of the world's plastic pollution. In an effort to "close the tap" and drastically reduce the amount of plastic entering the world's oceans, The Ocean Cleanup unveiled a barge-like system that was completely solar powered and was aimed to be a scalable solution that could be deployed around the world's rivers. The organization has since added several types of barrier technologies to the Interceptor portfolio. As of mid 2026, their interceptors have been deployed in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Dominican Republic, Vietnam, Thailand, Guatemala, the United States, Jamaica, Panama, Honduras, India, and the Philippines.

Awards and recognition

Personal life

Born in the Netherlands, Slat is of Croatian descent through his father.

References

  1. ↑ "Boyan Slat website". 8 December 2014. Archived from the original on 8 April 2017. Retrieved 5 November 2021.
  2. ↑ Finger, Tobias (24 June 2014). "The Ocean – Dieser Student will die Weltmeere Plastikmüll befreie" [The Ocean: This student wants to rid the seas of plastic waste]. Umwelt [environment] (in German). WiWo Green. Archived from the original on 3 March 2016. Retrieved 25 October 2014.
  3. ↑ Winter, Caroline (16 September 2014). "This Dutch Guy Now Has the Funds to Build His Ocean Cleanup Machine". Bloomberg Businessweek. Archived from the original on 17 September 2014.
  4. ↑ Boyan, Slat (20 October 2019). "Researchgate". Researchgate.
  5. ↑ Pabst, Josephine (24 October 2014). "Idee eines 20-Jährigen könnte die Ozeane entmüllen". Die Welt (in German). Archived from the original on 10 June 2016. Retrieved 5 March 2017.
  6. ↑ "Boyan Slat". 8 December 2014. Archived from the original on 8 April 2017. Retrieved 24 July 2017.
  7. 1 2 "About". The Ocean. Archived from the original on 10 July 2017. Retrieved 24 July 2017.
  8. 1 2 "How it all began". The Ocean Cleanup. Archived from the original on 23 August 2017. Retrieved 6 June 2017.
  9. ↑ "How the oceans can clean themselves: Boyan Slat at TEDxDelft". YouTube. 24 October 2014. Archived from the original on 8 September 2018. Retrieved 6 June 2017.
  10. ↑ Slat, Boyan. "The Economist". The Economist. Retrieved 6 June 2017.
  11. ↑ "About". The Ocean Cleanup. Archived from the original on 10 July 2017. Retrieved 6 June 2017.
  12. ↑ "Crowd Funding Campaign". The Ocean Cleanup. Archived from the original on 9 September 2018. Retrieved 6 June 2017.
  13. ↑ Slat, Boyan (June 2014), How the oceans can clean themselves: a feasibility study (PDF), archived from the original (PDF) on 23 April 2018, retrieved 24 February 2018 This is version 2.0 of the study. It states (p. 9) that version 1.0 is available on request.
  14. ↑ McClain, Craig (6 January 2019). "The Continued Boondoggle of the Ocean Cleanup". DeepSeaNews. Archived from the original on 12 August 2021. Retrieved 12 August 2021.
  15. ↑ Martini, Kim; Goldstein, Miriam (14 July 2014), The Ocean Cleanup, Part 2: Technical review of the feasibility study, archived from the original on 16 October 2019, retrieved 24 February 2018
  16. ↑ Ben, Guarino (17 January 2019). "Experts warned this floating garbage collector wouldn't work. The ocean proved them right". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on 13 June 2021. Retrieved 2 April 2021.
  17. ↑ Gertz, Emily (16 July 2014), Does 'The Ocean Cleanup' Stand Up To Peer Review?, Popular Science, archived from the original on 24 October 2019, retrieved 24 February 2018
  18. ↑ Kratochwill, Lindsey (26 March 2016), "Too good to be true? The Ocean Cleanup Project faces feasibility questions", The Guardian, archived from the original on 24 October 2019, retrieved 24 February 2018
  19. 1 2 Caminiti, Susan (22 April 2017). "Why Peter Thiel believes in this 22-year-old's dream to clean up the oceans". CNBC. Archived from the original on 19 October 2021. Retrieved 23 April 2017.
  20. ↑ "The Ocean Cleanup Raises 21.7 Million USD in Donations to Start Pacific Cleanup Trials". The Ocean Cleanup. Archived from the original on 2 June 2017. Retrieved 6 June 2017.
  21. ↑ "My Invention Makes Ocean Plastic The Worlds Cheapest Problem To Solve". Retrieved 12 August 2026.
  22. ↑ Bendix, Aria (12 December 2019). "A device invented by a 25-year-old is finally catching trash in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. It hauled 60 bags to shore to turn into new products". Archived from the original on 15 December 2019. Retrieved 24 December 2019.
  23. ↑ "Ocean Cleanup moves beyond testing and outlines a system 3x the size". Archived from the original on 12 August 2026. Retrieved 12 August 2026.
  24. ↑ "The Great Pacific Garbage Patch can be Cleaned for $7.5 Billion". Archived from the original on 12 August 2026. Retrieved 12 August 2026.
  25. ↑ Boyan Slat unveils the Interceptor River Cleanup system | Cleaning Rivers | The Ocean Cleanup, 27 October 2019, retrieved 7 June 2020
  26. ↑ "Dashboard". Archived from the original on 26 July 2022. Retrieved 25 July 2022.
  27. ↑ "Boyan Slat - Inspiration and action". 2014 Laureates. United Nations Environment Programme. Archived from the original on 15 January 2022. Retrieved 17 November 2014.
  28. ↑ "UN Champions of the Earth 2014". 19 November 2014. Archived from the original on 10 November 2021. Retrieved 10 November 2021.
  29. ↑ "Young Entrepreneur Award 2017". www.youngship.com. Archived from the original on 6 August 2017. Retrieved 8 June 2017.
  30. ↑ "30 Under 30 2016 Europe: Science and Healthcare". Forbes. Archived from the original on 9 August 2017. Retrieved 24 July 2017.
  31. ↑ "European of the Year: Boyan Slat Wants to Clean Up the Oceans". Reader's Digest. 31 January 2017. Archived from the original on 22 June 2017. Retrieved 6 June 2017.
  32. ↑ "Dit is de Nederlander van het Jaar 2017 - Elsevierweekblad.nl". Elsevierweekblad.nl (in Netherlands Dutch). 6 December 2017. Archived from the original on 7 December 2017. Retrieved 25 May 2018.
  33. ↑ "European Leadership Awards: meet the winners". euronews. 23 May 2018. Archived from the original on 25 May 2018. Retrieved 25 May 2018.
  34. ↑ "PMI Future 50". PMI. 2020. Archived from the original on 2 October 2023. Retrieved 7 October 2023.
  35. ↑ Booth, Harry (12 November 2024). "Boyan Slat". Archived from the original on 22 March 2026. Retrieved 17 February 2026.
  36. ↑ Brier, Elisabeth (18 September 2025). "Forbes Sustainability Leaders 2025". Archived from the original on 17 February 2026. Retrieved 17 February 2026.
  37. ↑ "The Independent Climate 100 List 2025 in full". The Independent. 21 September 2025. Archived from the original on 31 July 2026. Retrieved 17 February 2026.
  38. ↑ "The Independent Climate 100 List 2026". The Independent. 20 September 2026. Archived from the original on 21 September 2026. Retrieved 21 September 2026.
  39. ↑ Speksnijder, Cor (24 December 2015). "'In de geschiedenis zijn meer dingen wél gelukt dan niet'". de Volkskrant (in Dutch). Archived from the original on 4 March 2024. Retrieved 4 March 2024.