The Ocean Cleanup: How a High School Vision is Sifting the Seas

September 25, 2024

By Sabine Cuesta, 2024 Future Blue Youth Council member

It’s becoming too often an occurrence that we go outside, expecting to be awestruck by the experience of nature, but we are instead struck with only disappointment: in our consumerist society, in the inaction of large corporations and governments, and in the seeming indifference toward protecting Earth’s splendour.

But while disappointment is far from the ideal, it’s a feeling that spurs action and fuels the desire for change. It calls attention to mindsets, legal frameworks, and systems that fall short of what they should be and emphasizes the importance of a planet that deserves better than our exploitation. One notable example of disappointment serving as a catalyst for change is covered in this insightful episode, titled The Great Ocean Cleanup in the new series Wild Hope, produced by HHMI Tangled Bank Studios.

The episode follows the story of Boyan Slat, who, after a frustrating scuba diving experience in his youth, envisioned a way to rid the ocean of plastic pollution. His high school assignment, born out of imagination and the recognition of an unaddressed issue, was brought to life years later in the form of The Ocean Cleanup—an idea-turned-reality because of the belief that cleaning the ocean is truly possible.

With a patient and dedicated team of people who hoped to see a cleaner ocean, The Ocean Cleanup has made a real difference. Their goal is to remove 90% of ocean plastic by 2040, and they have made significant progress, having removed over 9000 tons of trash—equivalent to a tenth of the plastic in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch—to date. The garbage collected is then sorted, washed, and packaged for recycling. The Ocean Cleanup team also works with local partners in areas where plastic enters the ocean through waterways, often as a result of underfunded waste collection systems.

One such area is Kingston, Jamaica, where a partnership with Alecia Beaufort from Clean Harbours Jamaica has grown into the Kingston Harbour Cleanup Project. Collaboration such as this is invaluable—uniting communities in striving for a better future and taking a crucial step by preventing more plastic from entering our oceans. Learn more about the inspiring collaborative cleanup efforts in the Wild Hope episode mentioned before.

As a high school student, I know how easy it is to feel discouraged about the scope of the problems we face and how easy it is to simply accept the letdowns—especially those that seem entirely out of our hands to address. But watching this episode, seeing the dream of one young advocate bring communities together to combat such a daunting issue, brings me hope. Because if this much change can spark from a single high schooler’s hypothetical, then what can’t be achieved by our collective imagination and resolve?

It’s uplifting to see initiatives like these, working to right some of humanity’s entirely preventable wrongs. Yet these wrongs are committed day by day, and the hope is that one day not far from today, the root of these issues—in this case, our unending production and consumption of disposable plastic products—will collectively be addressed. Until then, passion, imagination, and a shared goal are all we need to tide us over.

 

Featured photo courtesy of The Ocean Cleanup