This Tuesday, Jean-Pierre Montanay sheds light on the new project of Boyan Slat, the Dutch who had launched a vacuum cleaner project in the oceans - a failure. Now, the young man wants to tackle the 1,000 most polluted rivers in the world. For five months he has been testing the Interceptor ".
Boyan Slat, a young Dutch environmental activist caused a sensation in 2012 when he announced that he had developed a revolutionary process to clean the oceans. What has become of him and tomorrow, will he finally succeed in his bet?
He took the bottle and a few years but at 26, he did not abandon his project. It has been testing for five months in the Pacific the new version, still in the prototype state, of its gigantic system supposed to rid the seas of the thousands of tons of plastic floating on the surface: a sort of floating barrier in the shape of U traps all the lingering waste before directing it to an extraction platform.
Very ambitious, its objectives are first to liquidate this vortex, a whirlwind of waste that floats between Hawaii and California, baptized the 7th continent and as large as 3 times France. It is said to contain 80,000 tonnes of plastic. In the longer term, the young green activist who founded "The Ocean clean up" intends by 2040 to capture 90% of plastics on the seas for recycling on land.
He was late because he had a lot of setbacks at the start
Relayed already by social networks, its first appearance at a conference in 2012 is a misfortune. The whole world then discovers a little genius who confidently assures that he has found the solution to clean the oceans. His discovery captivates the green, intrigues the general public, and makes skeptical experts leap about the effectiveness of the method. With two million euros collected, he launched in 2018 at sea these barriers which are making a flop.
The waste comes out of the net supposed to retain it and the barriers are not sturdy enough, break under the pressure of sea currents when he had only collected two tonnes of waste. His merit is to have given up on nothing, so he corrected the shot by modifying the system to make it more solid.
He also plans to deal with the problem at source by preventing plastics from going to sea!
80% of them are carried by the rivers. Boyan Slat has therefore developed "Interceptor", a boat or rather a stationary barge 24 meters long, autonomous, powered by solar energy. Installed in the middle of the watercourse with a barrier on each side, so all floating waste is sucked up and recovered at the rate of 50 to 100 tonnes per day. Two boats are already operating: one in Indonesia the other in Malaysia. Its ambition is to clean the 1,000 most polluting rivers in the world. If he succeeds, which we can doubt given the scale of the project, hat!