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How the oceans can clean themselves boyan slat at tedxdelft
Boyan Slat (born 27 July 1994) is a Dutch inventor, entrepreneur and Aerospace Engineering student drop-out. He was born to Croatian immigrants from Istra.
Contents
- How the oceans can clean themselves boyan slat at tedxdelft
- How we showed the oceans could clean themselves boyan slat on the ocean cleanup
- Early life
- The Ocean Cleanup
- Awards and recognition
- References
At age 16 (2011), Boyan Slat came across more plastic than fish while diving in Greece. Slat decided to devote a high school project to digging deeper into ocean plastic pollution and why it was considered impossible to clean up. He later came up with the idea to build a passive system, using the circulating ocean currents to his advantage, which he presented at a TEDx talk in Delft (2012).
Slat discontinued his Aerospace Engineering studies at TU Delft, to devote all his time to developing his idea. He founded The Ocean Cleanup in 2013, and shortly after, his TEDx talk went viral after being shared on several news sites.
"Technology is the most potent agent of change. It is an amplifier of our human capabilities.", Slat wrote in The Economist. "Whereas other change-agents rely on reshuffling the existing building blocks of society, technological innovation creates entirely new ones, expanding our problem-solving toolbox."
How we showed the oceans could clean themselves boyan slat on the ocean cleanup
Early life
Boyan Slat was born on 27 July 1994 in Delft, The Netherlands. Slat has a history of doing engineering projects, building things since he was two years old. Notably, he set a Guinness World Record by launching 250 water rockets simultaneously at age 12. His father is an artist who currently resides in Istria County, Croatia.
The Ocean Cleanup
In 2013, 18 year old Slat founded the non-profit entity The Ocean Cleanup, of which he is now the CEO. The Ocean Cleanup's mission is to develop advanced technologies to rid the world’s oceans of plastic . After foundation, The Ocean Cleanup managed to raise $2.2 million through a crowdfunding campaign with the help of 38,000 donors from 160 countries.
Since The Ocean Cleanup started, the organization has raised $31.5 million USD in donations from entrepreneurs Europe in Silicon Valley, including Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce. By developing new designs, Boyan Slat estimates that half of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch will be gone within 5 years, at minimal costs. The project will start with one system in mid-2018 and progressively make use of additional systems until it achieves full-scale deployment by 2020.
Awards and recognition
In November 2014, Slat was awarded the Champions of the Earth award of the United Nations Environment Programme. HM King Harald of Norway awarded Boyan Slat the Young Entrepreneur Award in 2015. Forbes included Slat in their 2016 "30 under 30" list In 2016. Slat was selected as a Thiel Fellow, the program started in 2011 by venture capitalist and PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel. It gives $100,000 to entrepreneurs 22 years old and younger who have left or postponed college to work on their start-up. In February 2017, Reader's Digest appointed Boyan Slat European of the Year (Reader's Digest award).