The Ocean Cleanup, a Rotterdam-based foundation that aims to eliminate plastic waste from the oceans, has received a $15 million grant.
The donation from the Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust will support the cleanup of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (GPGP).
The Helmsley trust is a global philanthropy with an $8 billion endowment. It is committed to helping people live better lives and creating stronger, healthier futures for individuals and communities.
The Ocean Cleanup has been capturing plastic in the GPGP since 2019. This garbage patch is the world’s largest accumulation of floating waste. Located halfway between Hawaii and California, it has an estimated surface area equivalent to three times the size of France. Analysis from scientists at The Ocean Cleanup showed that the GBGP is 4 to 16 times greater than past calculations, consisting of 100,000 tons of plastic.
The project has developed technology to predict were hotspots of high concentration of waste are within the GPGP as ocean currents shift. It then deploys massive vessels to collect the waste. Last year, its System 002 solution collected some 55 tons of plastic waste from the GBGP before being replaced by a three times larger and more efficient solution, System 03.
System 03 is currently deployed in a validation phase in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. The Ocean Cleanup is preparing to scale the technology with the goal of eventually deploying a fleet of 10 full-size system that together will be capable of removing 50% of the GPGP every five years.
“2023 has been the year that we transitioned from System 002, which was our prototype system, half a mile long, to System 03, a mile and a half in length, which is the world’s first full-scale ocean clean-up system, dramatically increasing our catches—up to almost 50 tons in a single trip by the end of the year,” said Boyan Slat, founder and CEO of The Ocean Cleanup. “On top of that, we’ve been able to innovate countless other things including the MASH, the Marine Animal Safety Hatch, through which we now have a way to actively expel any marine life that is not supposed to enter the clean-up system. The result of all of this has been that we are now cleaning an area the size of a football field every five seconds.”
“We’re particularly grateful for the Helmsley Charitable Trust for being such an early mover in this and helping us through this challenging developmental phase, enabling us to unlock the scale up and with that, make the largest clean up in history a reality,” Slat added.
Founded in 2013, The Ocean Cleanup now employs a broadly multi-disciplined team of approximately 140. The foundation is headquartered in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, and opened its first regional office in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in 2023.