This 25-year-old Dutch entrepreneur has the ambitious goal of helping to eliminate millions of tons of plastic from our oceans. He wants to build a fixed barrier in the oceans which would allow the currents to pass, but which would capture plastic waste at the same time. The plastic concentrates in the center and can later be collected for recycling. 

At 21, Boyan Slat founded The Ocean Cleanup Project. After a  crowdfunding campaign with which he raised over 2 million dollars, his team built the first prototype in real scale. By deploying a fleet of systems, The Ocean Cleanup estimates to be able to remove 50% of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch every five years. The concentrated plastic will be brought back to shore for recycling and sold to B2C companies. The revenue gained will help fund the cleanup’s expansion to the other four ocean gyres.