The Ocean Cleanup Successfully Removed 100,000 Kg Of Plastic From The Great Pacific Garbage Patch
Plastic pollution is a major threat facing our planet – particularly our oceans and water systems.
It is so important that we all do our bit, however big or small in order to help alleviate the damage that plastic is doing to our planet.
Fortunately, there is good news for The Ocean Cleanup. It has reached an incredible new milestone since its August 2021 launch.
BREAKING: more than 100,000kg of plastic removed from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (GPGP).
Thank you to our determined offshore crew and supporters worldwide; together, we have now officially cleaned up 1/1000th of the GPGP. pic.twitter.com/DLWPNkspcr
— The Ocean Cleanup (@TheOceanCleanup) July 25, 2022
As they shared on Twitter, they’ve successfully removed more than 100,000 kg of plastic that was hiding around the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. That’s 220,462 pounds of trash. What an amazing feat!
The System 002, also called Jenny, was first launched in the ocean back in August 2021. Since then, it has been consistently collecting 101,353 kg of plastic over the course of 45 extractions. As a result, it has cleaned up an area of more than 3,000 square kilometers or 1864 square miles!
Today we reached an exciting milestone: over 100,000kg of plastic removed from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch – more than the combined weight of two and a half Boeing 737-800s. Here's Boyan illustrating what this looks like in terms of plastic we extracted from the GPGP: pic.twitter.com/mTUPggSfEP
— The Ocean Cleanup (@TheOceanCleanup) July 25, 2022
On top of that, the previous prototypes of Jenny have collected 7,173 kg of plastic, meaning that the entire Ocean Cleanup has collected 108,526 kg of plastic from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch! That is incredible, especially since a 2018 study revealed that the total amount of plastic that has accumulated in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is about 100,000,000 kg.
The founder and CEO of The Ocean Cleanup, Boyan Slat, shared a press release that stated, “Thus, if we repeat this 100,000 kg haul 1,000 times, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch will be gone.”
In a separate press release, The Ocean Cleanup shared that they are looking to begin moving onto a new system, System 03. The new and expanded system is expected to be able to clean up plastic at an even faster rate than the current System 002. In fact, thanks to faster speed, efficiency, and uptime, the new system should work at 10 times the current rate! That could really make a dent in plastic clean-up.
Watch how the current System 002 works in the video clip below:
What do you think of the Ocean Cleanup? Let us know!
