Can one person alter the future of our planet? Meet Boyan Slat, the visionary combating global plastic pollution with The Ocean Cleanup | Impossible-Possible (English version)

Description

"Did you know that 80% of plastic pollution in the oceans comes from just 1% of rivers?" In this captivating episode of Impossible • Possible, Boyan Slat, the visionary behind The Ocean Cleanup, takes us on his fascinating journey. At just sixteen years old, a disappointing dive in Greece ignited in him a burning passion for technology and innovation. Boyan Slat left his studies in aerospace engineering to fully dedicate himself to his mission: cleaning our oceans. With revolutionary technologies like the Interceptors, The Ocean Cleanup targets the rivers responsible for this pollution. Join us to discover how a young man is turning his dream into reality for the sake of our planet.

About the podcast Impossible • Possible

For its 160th anniversary, Societe Generale wanted to celebrate the relationship of trust with its clients and partners, without whom nothing would have been possible. Thus, was born the Impossible • Possible art project. Marco D'Anna, a photographer, produced a series of 75 portraits of these men and women on behalf of the Group: entrepreneurs, doctors, financiers, families, volunteers, musicians, industrialists... We decided to go beyond the images... Discover these human stories, where the impossible becomes possible, these authentic testimonials where the protagonists reveal their paths, their visions, their passions.

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Transcription

Boyan Slat
When I was 16 years old, I went scuba diving in Greece, just family holidays, and I hoped to see all these beautiful things. I was excited about seeing all that. Then I went underwater and there were hardly any fish. I just saw lots and lots of plastic bags. That was quite disappointing, and my brain started thinking, how do we solve this? What can we do about this? I couldn't stop thinking about it and I started thinking about systems and technologies that could actually, clean up the plastic in the ocean. I then had to do a high school science project and decided to focus on this problem to understand it more. And after that, I went studying, I went to university, I enrolled in aerospace engineering. But, after half a year, I still really couldn't stop thinking about it. And then I thought, ‘okay, let's give this a try’. Really the only way this could have a non-zero chance of success would be if I would really dedicate all my time to it. And if it doesn't work out, if it turns out to be impossible, I can always just go back to university. For me it never really felt like such a huge decision to drop out. Then I started the Ocean Cleanup and, did not look back. I think I've been a maker all my life, I would say so. Since I was two years old, I was already very interested in technology and building things. I built my first own chair out of wood when I was two. And then it turned into things like building computers, making video games, making newspapers. And I kind of got into chemistry, so I was making things like explosives. When I was 12, I wanted to get a Guinness World Record by launching 213 small rockets at the same time, which I did. I always had my projects. I was never bored. I was curious about everything and the making I really enjoyed. So, for me there is an art, a beauty in solving problems. There is a complexity involved it really pushes you. Sometimes building things, science, technology, it's seen as something very abstract, something that is like kind of a nerd thing. But I think there are a lot of parallels with making paintings or photography or writing or anything. It's a creative process and I think that's what I enjoy a lot about it, it's the combination of using both something that's very precise and mathematical and on the other hand something that is super creative. And I think that problem solving is really at the interface of those two worlds. Of course, the kind of projects I did as a child were those kind of things on a small scale. But of course, the Ocean Clean Up is just another example of solving a problem, but then just a problem that touches billions of people. What we do at The Ocean Cleanup is not just cleaning up the plastic that's already in the ocean, we also work on preventing more plastic from even reaching the ocean. And through our research, we found out that just 1% of the world's rivers is responsible for about 80% of all the plastic that goes into the ocean. So if we can stop the plastic in those 1% of rivers, which by the way are still a thousand rivers, it's still a big project. But we think it's the fastest and most cost-effective way to stop plastic from going into the ocean. Because if you think about all the plastic that's being consumed, it's about 400 million tons. If you think about how much plastic is actually going into the ocean, it's a few hundred thousand tons. That's only one thousandth of all the plastic. So if you try to change the entire plastic economy, change the materials that the world uses, change waste management infrastructures, I think ultimately those are key things. But because you're talking about so much material and also because that amount is growing. There are billions of people currently climbing out of poverty and they're using way less plastic today than us in the West are doing. So that's just a very hard and slow process. I think it's going to take decades at least for plastic to be properly managed. I think in the meantime, what we can do, which is cheap, and which is fast, is to catch it in rivers before it goes into the oceans. That's why we developed technologies we call interceptors, which are systems we put in the mouth of these rivers, which catches the plastic before it goes into the ocean. And right now, we're stopping roughly 1% of global plastic emissions. We are in 15 rivers across eight countries. And we are currently finishing the first 20, which are really the pilot projects. And once that's done, we aim to scale up all around the world in a very rapid way. Our ambition in the next six to nine months is to complete those first 20 rivers. We really have great proof points that show that we can solve plastic pollution in this part of the ocean, so let's do it everywhere. I think that's important. So that's really a river thing. On oceans, it's a bound. Getting to proven technology essentially to show that with this performance, if we do these and these things, we can actually clean up the garbage patch in 10 years time which is our goal. That's really critical that we prepare ourselves for scale up I think that is the unifying objective for both what we do in oceans and rivers. Starting in 2025 we can really rapidly ramp up the number of rivers that we are in and the number of Ocean Clean Up systems we have, and get to clean oceans as soon as possible. The ocean cleanup is a global non-profit where our mission is to rid the world's oceans of plastic which we do by cleaning up the plastic that's already in the ocean as well as stopping more plastic from reaching the oceans by catching it in rivers. You know, if you look at human history, it's been just a list of "we had all these problems" and then "we solved these problems". And I truly believe it's the best time yet for humans to live now. And I think it can be way greater even than today. People will look back at the 21st century and be astounded about all the things we couldn't do and the fact that people still died of diseases and that we were still breathing toxic air and polluting oceans. Those are sort of very primitive things like if you think of the maturity of a civilization, I think we are still quite low on those stairs and if this told me anything is that the problems we face today are solvable and there is the future. And as long as we work hard for it, I think the future can be great.

Description

About the podcast Impossible • Possible

Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Transcription

Boyan Slat
When I was 16 years old, I went scuba diving in Greece, just family holidays, and I hoped to see all these beautiful things. I was excited about seeing all that. Then I went underwater and there were hardly any fish. I just saw lots and lots of plastic bags. That was quite disappointing, and my brain started thinking, how do we solve this? What can we do about this? I couldn't stop thinking about it and I started thinking about systems and technologies that could actually, clean up the plastic in the ocean. I then had to do a high school science project and decided to focus on this problem to understand it more. And after that, I went studying, I went to university, I enrolled in aerospace engineering. But, after half a year, I still really couldn't stop thinking about it. And then I thought, ‘okay, let's give this a try’. Really the only way this could have a non-zero chance of success would be if I would really dedicate all my time to it. And if it doesn't work out, if it turns out to be impossible, I can always just go back to university. For me it never really felt like such a huge decision to drop out. Then I started the Ocean Cleanup and, did not look back. I think I've been a maker all my life, I would say so. Since I was two years old, I was already very interested in technology and building things. I built my first own chair out of wood when I was two. And then it turned into things like building computers, making video games, making newspapers. And I kind of got into chemistry, so I was making things like explosives. When I was 12, I wanted to get a Guinness World Record by launching 213 small rockets at the same time, which I did. I always had my projects. I was never bored. I was curious about everything and the making I really enjoyed. So, for me there is an art, a beauty in solving problems. There is a complexity involved it really pushes you. Sometimes building things, science, technology, it's seen as something very abstract, something that is like kind of a nerd thing. But I think there are a lot of parallels with making paintings or photography or writing or anything. It's a creative process and I think that's what I enjoy a lot about it, it's the combination of using both something that's very precise and mathematical and on the other hand something that is super creative. And I think that problem solving is really at the interface of those two worlds. Of course, the kind of projects I did as a child were those kind of things on a small scale. But of course, the Ocean Clean Up is just another example of solving a problem, but then just a problem that touches billions of people. What we do at The Ocean Cleanup is not just cleaning up the plastic that's already in the ocean, we also work on preventing more plastic from even reaching the ocean. And through our research, we found out that just 1% of the world's rivers is responsible for about 80% of all the plastic that goes into the ocean. So if we can stop the plastic in those 1% of rivers, which by the way are still a thousand rivers, it's still a big project. But we think it's the fastest and most cost-effective way to stop plastic from going into the ocean. Because if you think about all the plastic that's being consumed, it's about 400 million tons. If you think about how much plastic is actually going into the ocean, it's a few hundred thousand tons. That's only one thousandth of all the plastic. So if you try to change the entire plastic economy, change the materials that the world uses, change waste management infrastructures, I think ultimately those are key things. But because you're talking about so much material and also because that amount is growing. There are billions of people currently climbing out of poverty and they're using way less plastic today than us in the West are doing. So that's just a very hard and slow process. I think it's going to take decades at least for plastic to be properly managed. I think in the meantime, what we can do, which is cheap, and which is fast, is to catch it in rivers before it goes into the oceans. That's why we developed technologies we call interceptors, which are systems we put in the mouth of these rivers, which catches the plastic before it goes into the ocean. And right now, we're stopping roughly 1% of global plastic emissions. We are in 15 rivers across eight countries. And we are currently finishing the first 20, which are really the pilot projects. And once that's done, we aim to scale up all around the world in a very rapid way. Our ambition in the next six to nine months is to complete those first 20 rivers. We really have great proof points that show that we can solve plastic pollution in this part of the ocean, so let's do it everywhere. I think that's important. So that's really a river thing. On oceans, it's a bound. Getting to proven technology essentially to show that with this performance, if we do these and these things, we can actually clean up the garbage patch in 10 years time which is our goal. That's really critical that we prepare ourselves for scale up I think that is the unifying objective for both what we do in oceans and rivers. Starting in 2025 we can really rapidly ramp up the number of rivers that we are in and the number of Ocean Clean Up systems we have, and get to clean oceans as soon as possible. The ocean cleanup is a global non-profit where our mission is to rid the world's oceans of plastic which we do by cleaning up the plastic that's already in the ocean as well as stopping more plastic from reaching the oceans by catching it in rivers. You know, if you look at human history, it's been just a list of "we had all these problems" and then "we solved these problems". And I truly believe it's the best time yet for humans to live now. And I think it can be way greater even than today. People will look back at the 21st century and be astounded about all the things we couldn't do and the fact that people still died of diseases and that we were still breathing toxic air and polluting oceans. Those are sort of very primitive things like if you think of the maturity of a civilization, I think we are still quite low on those stairs and if this told me anything is that the problems we face today are solvable and there is the future. And as long as we work hard for it, I think the future can be great.

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