100,000 Kg Of Trash Has Been Removed From The Great Pacific Garbage Patch

July 28, 2022

The Ocean Cleanup has reached a new milestone: over 100,000 kg of trash removed from the the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

Since its deployment in August 2021, System 002 (a.k.a. "Jenny") has collected 101,353 kg of plastic over 45 extractions, sweeping an area of ocean of over 3,000 square kilometers (1864 square miles).

Added to the 7,173 kg of plastic captured by our previous prototype systems, The Ocean Cleanup has now collected 108,526 kg of plastic from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (GPGP).

According to a 2018 study, the total amount of accumulated plastic is roughly 100,000,000 kg in the GPGP.

"Thus, if we repeat this 100,000 kg haul 1,000 times, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch will be gone," Slat says.

How System 002 Works:

Boyan Slat, the founder and CEO of The Ocean Cleanup, said in a press release on Monday that they are ready to move on to a new and expanded System 03, which is expected to capture plastic at a rate potentially 10 times higher than System 002 through a combination of increased size, improved efficiency, and increased uptime.