It has been a while since we checked in with Boyan Slat, the young Dutch engineer who, at the tender age of 18, founded Ocean Cleanup for the purpose of removing the plastic floating in the oceans of the world — all of it! That was a pretty bold ambition. When I was 18, my primary interest was buying a well used Jaguar XK-120 for $500. Slat is in his early thirties today and still pursuing his dream. With the benefit of hindsight, he has adjusted his plan considerably. Originally his target was the Giant Pacific Garbage Patch — a collection of floating plastic and other manmade debris large enough to be seen from the International Space Station. That proved to be a Hurculean task. A recent study estimated there are 1.8 trillion pieces of floating plastic in the Pacific Gyre that collectively weigh more than 80,000 tons. Ultimately, it proved impossible to clean up the Pacific garbage patch, and so Slat and his team at Ocean Cleanup had to adjust their vision. From The River To The Sea Today, the goal is to clean up the 30 most polluted cities in the world using the Interceptor systems — floating trash collection devices — designed by Ocean Cleanup based upon its experience. James Patterson is in charge of one such system located at the mouth of Ballona Creek where it meets Santa Monica Bay on the west side of Los Angeles. He told The Guardian in a recent interview that the focus now is on collecting trash in rivers before it gets to the ocean. Today, there are 21 Interceptor systems operating in ten locations around the world. In addition to the US, they are operating in Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Guatemala, Jamaica, and the Dominican Republic. Rivers are the key. When it researched the problem, Ocean Cleanup found that just 1,000 of the world’s rivers are responsible for nearly 80 percent of the plastic waste that gets added to the oceans each year. In all, 90 percent of all ocean pollution comes from rivers. “We have to turn the faucet off before we can scoop the ocean, or else all we’re doing is taking out legacy trash to replace it with new trash,” Patterson said. “Before you can clean out the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, you really need to turn off the source.” A Solar Powered High Tech Barge Trash collected from Bollona Creek. Credit: Ocran Cleanup The Interceptor is comprised of two barges. A V-shaped floating boom directs rubbish into the first barge, where a conveyor belt scoops it up. An automated shuttle then distributes the waste into six dumpsters on the larger barge and alerts the crew when it is full. The entire operation is powered by electricity from solar panels mounted overhead. The conveyor belt runs slowly, dropping bits of plastic and waste into each of the bins, which have a total capacity of ten tons — about the same as what a fully loaded dump truck can carry. “It may seem simple, but truly a master of engineering goes on inside of these,” Patterson added. The collected waste is then sorted and sent to appropriate refuse facilities. “We want to make sure that from start to finish, we’re pulling the trash out in a responsible way, and it’s getting sorted or stored in a responsible manner,” Patterson says. “We don’t want a circular battery of trash here. Instead of specific rivers, the goal is to clean up an entire area, because that’s how you get an actual genuine impact on society and on the environment,” Patterson said. Designing the autonomous Interceptor system began in 2017, while the pilot project for Los Angeles began in 2022. It cost about $1.3 million to design the system and obtain the necessary permits, and another $1.5 million to obtain the custom designed barges and put the booms in place. Maintenance each year costs $650,000. The Interceptor is being provided to Los Angeles County free of charge by Ocean Cleanup, which has raised more than $30 million to date to support its mission. Success on Bollona Creek Ballona Creek is the conduit for a 130 square mile urban drainage network in Los Angeles County. This particular Interceptor collected 143,710 pounds of trash from Bollona Creek in 2025. Ocean Cleanup plans to launch two more Interceptor systems in the Los Angeles area, one for the San Gabriel River and the other for the Los Angeles River. The cleanup effort is already having an impact on local coastal communities, Patterson said. Beach cities south of the project have lowered their budgets for beach grooming. There is simply less waste on the sand, so the beaches don’t need to be cleaned as often. Each river requires its own special system. “There’s no one size fits all,” Patterson said. “Every river is different in how they act, where you can deploy, what the local government and permitting time lines look like, and just the conditions of nature.” Translation — it takes a lot of hard work and specialized knowledge to design each system and get it into operation. But it is happening because of the vision of one young engineer from the Netherlands.
