A 16-year-old boy builds a trash-eating robot to save the oceans and ends up becoming the UN’s youngest ‘Champion of the Earth’

What starts as a school project rarely ends up changing the world. But imagine the scenario: you’re 16 and decide to build something called a “trash-eating robot” with that thinking in mind. This Boyan Slat, a Dutch teenager with no backing, no engineering degree, and barely enough savings for a half-decent bike, wasn’t interested in usual outcomes. He was too busy trying to figure out how to remove 90% of the world’s floating ocean plastic.

What was Slat’s pollution solution?

The idea struck during a scuba diving trip in Greece in 2011. Instead of fish, Boyan found himself swimming through a sea of plastic bags. The absurdity of it stuck with him. Why were we sending rovers to Mars, but letting garbage islands grow on Earth?

Back home, he turned the frustration into focus. A high school project morphed into a rough concept: a passive system that could harness natural ocean currents to collect trash. Think of it like an ocean-sized pool skimmer – only much smarter. The response from his teachers? Pretty much what you’d expect: skeptical nods and polite silence.

Then came TEDx Delft in 2012. At just 18, Boyan walked onto the stage and presented his concept.

The video barely moved the needle – until, months later, it was picked up by a few blogs. And then a few more. Suddenly, it went viral. People weren’t just watching. They were donating.

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch challenge

A crowdfunding campaign raised $2.2 million from 38,000 donors across 160 countries. This turned a teenager’s science project into The Ocean Cleanup, a nonprofit now operating out of Rotterdam, employing over 120 people from more than 30 countries.

Boyan dropped out of aerospace engineering school. With just €300 of saved-up money and an internet-fueled burst of momentum, he set about doing something most scientists had called impossible: cleaning up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

Early prototypes, dubbed Systems 001 and 001/B, had their share of failures – plastic slipping through, parts breaking off in the ocean. But they kept at it. In 2019, System 001/B finally worked. Then came System 002, which in 2021 gathered 20,000 pounds of ocean waste.

But cleaning what’s already out there isn’t enough. So they launched the Interceptor: a solar-powered barge-like system designed to catch plastic in rivers before it reaches the ocean. Research showed that just 1,000 rivers are responsible for 80% of the plastic polluting the seas. So far, Interceptors have been deployed in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Dominican Republic, and Los Angeles - with more on the way.

What is Boyan’s objective?

The scope is absurdly ambitious: Boyan wants to remove half of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch within five years, and reach 90% removal by 2040. He’s received more than $30 million in backing from names like Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff and the Thiel Foundation. And he’s co-authored over a dozen scientific papers and multiple patents along the way.

In 2014, the UN named Boyan Slat the youngest-ever Champion of the Earth. He was 20. But he earned the award for something he began doing at 16, alone, with no roadmap.

Today, he’s still at the helm of The Ocean Cleanup. Still tweaking, still testing. Still trying to put himself out of business by doing what everyone said couldn’t be done: cleaning up the mess we dumped into the sea.

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