The Ocean Cleanup

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.

It was founded in 2013 by Boyan Slat, a Dutch inventor who serves as its CEO. It develops both ocean and river systems. Its ocean system consists of a floating barrier at the surface of the water deployed in oceanic gyres to collect marine debris, designed in a shape to funnel the debris into a collecting net, or directly into a wide-mouthed boat for on-site processing. The project aims to launch 60 1km-long systems, which they predict could remove 50% of the debris in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch five years from deployment.

Its river system consists of similar floating barriers, sometimes anchored to the riverbank. The Ocean Cleanup also publishes scientific papers, and estimates that "1% of rivers are responsible for 80% of the pollution in the world's seas". They aim to have 1000 rivers protected by such barriers.