The Ocean Cleanup is a nonprofit environmental engineering organization based in the Netherlands that develops technology to extract plastic pollution from the oceans and to capture it in rivers before it can reach the ocean. Their initial focus was on the Pacific Ocean and its garbage patch, and extended to rivers in countries including Indonesia, Guatemala, and the United States.
The Ocean Cleanup was founded in 2013 by Boyan Slat, a Dutch inventor[3][4][5] who serves as its CEO. It develops both ocean and river based catch systems. Its ocean system consists of a funnel shaped floating barrier which is towed by two ships. The ocean system is deployed in oceanic gyres to collect marine debris.[6] The project aims to launch 10 or more approximately 2 km-long (1.2 mi) systems which they predict could remove 50% of the debris in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch five years from deployment.[7][8]
The river system consists of a variety of floating barriers which are anchored to the riverbank. The Ocean Cleanup also publishes scientific papers,[9][10][11][12] and estimates that "1% of worlds rivers (~1000 rivers) are responsible for 80% of the pollution in the world's seas".[13][14][15] They aim to deploy their river systems in these 1000 rivers.
As of August 2023, the organization has removed more than 15.8 million kilograms of trash from rivers and the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.[16]