Here it is.. In 2012, an 18-year-old Dutch entrepreneur told a...

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    Here it is..
    In 2012, an 18-year-old Dutch entrepreneur told a TEDx audience he was designing a device to clean-up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

    Boyan Slat's idea sounded like a novel concept that would quickly succumb to the insurmountable logistical issues of cleaning up 1.6 million square kilometres of plastic in deep, remote, open ocean.

    However, six years on Mr Slat's organisation The Ocean Cleanup is about to test a 120-metre section, ahead of deploying the first 600-metre system to the Northern Pacific Ocean later this year.


    Boyan Slat, now 23 years old, has brought the launch of his project forward to 2018.


    (Supplied: The Ocean Cleanup)
    With millions in crowdfunding cash behind them, they aim to send up to 60 devices to the region between Hawaii and the north-west coast of the United States by 2020.

    At a launch in 2017, Mr Slat told a large crowd — including many of his financial backers — the devices will be able to "clean-up 50 per cent of the patch in just five years".

    Critics say the apparatus will act as an aggregating device that will attract and trap marine life, and that environmental impact studies have been insufficient to eliminate risk.

    Many also believe powerful swells in the North Pacific will smash apart the structures, adding even more garbage to the world's biggest floating dump.

    But The Ocean Cleanup team say they are confident they can iron out any kinks, and pull off "the largest clean-up in history".

    'To catch plastic, act like plastic'
    The pilot being launched this year — called a "floater" — consists of a 600-metre-long, floating hard-walled tube made from high-density polyurethane (HDPE).


    A screen a few metres deep will run the length of the floater, "able to catch anything from one-centimetre plastic particles up to large, discarded fishing nets".

    Suspended from the floater a few hundred metres below, will be a free-floating sea anchor.

    The idea is that the sea anchor creates enough drag that the apparatus moves slower than the floating plastic debris on the surface, which will be pushed into the net by prevailing winds and currents.

    At the same time, the fact that the apparatus is free floating means in theory, it should be pushed to the same areas as the rubbish.

    Spokesperson Erika Traskvik said The Ocean Cleanup was on track to launch soon.

    "The assembly is going on really well. The first segment, which is 120 metres [long] has been put together and will be towed out for a tow-test in the [San Francisco] Bay area next week," she said
 
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