After 5 years of research, engineering and testing, we launched the world’s first ocean cleanup system from San Francisco Bay, marking the start of the cleanup. The system is now on its way to an intermediary test stop, 250-350 nautical miles offshore for a 2-week trial before continuing its journey toward the Great Pacific Garbage...
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After six months of assembly, we can now announce that System 001 is officially complete. It is currently positioned entirely in the Seaplane Lagoon – the sheltered body of water adjacent our assembly yard in Alameda. The cleanup system will make tow with the Maersk Launcher at Anchorage 9 on September 7th, the morning before the...
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The following post you are about to read is a lengthy but necessary one. Generally, at The Ocean Cleanup, we avoid speaking out against criticism. We welcome all thoughtful critique and value the insight, but recently we experienced something different. At The Ocean Cleanup our mission is to rid the world’s oceans of plastic. Our...
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With the thorough analysis performed by independent environmental consultancy CSA Ocean Sciences now complete, The Ocean Cleanup has issued the results of the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) for System 001. The purpose of the EIA is to address the potential environmental risks of various factors related to the deployment of the...
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On May 11th, 2017 we unveiled our new method to clean up the world's ocean garbage patches. Instead of having one massive cleanup system fixed to the seabed, we unveiled a plan where we would instead deploy a fleet of many smaller, free-floating systems. To be able to passively collect the plastic, we came up with the idea to suspend a...
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On May 19th, from our assembly yard in Alameda, a 120-meter section of our cleanup system was towed out of San Francisco Bay and into the Pacific to conduct a tow test. We are happy to report that the entire section performed satisfactorily. Of the minor issues that the screen did endure, most were identified during earlier...
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Today, we entered into an agreement with the Netherlands relating to the deployment of our cleanup systems on the high seas. The agreement deals with matters such as safety of navigation, protection of the marine environment, and the rights of other users of the high seas with respect to our cleanup systems. With this agreement the...
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We have successfully initiated our 120-meter tow test unit towards its designated test pattern approximately 50 nautical miles outside of San Francisco’s Golden Gate. This is an important test before we deploy our complete system into the Great Pacific Garbage Patch later this summer. In our last update, we detailed the...
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To meet our ambitious goals of deploying the first ocean cleanup system this summer, we are reminded of one of our basic design principles here at The Ocean Cleanup: doing is the fastest way of learning. In less than five weeks, we progressed from signing the lease for an empty assembly yard in Alameda, California to a fully active...
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Before we share some great news on the System 001 assembly front, we wanted to provide you with an update on our recent scale model tests, the most advanced we have conducted so far. Why test You might be wondering why we are still testing and simultaneously building our system. This comes down to our iterative design process....
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