The Ocean Cleanup is a Dutch nonprofit organization based in the Netherlands that develops technologies intended to reduce plastic pollution in oceans and rivers. Founded in 2013 by Boyan Slat the group focuses on two main approaches large offshore collection systems designed for accumulation zones such as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, and land‑based “Interceptor” devices deployed in rivers to capture waste before it reaches the sea. The organization’s work has received extensive media attention and has been the subject of both support and criticism.
The Ocean Cleanup has conducted many prototype trials since 2018, iterating on its offshore system and expanding its rive program to several countries. The organization publishes operational data and environmental assessments, while external studies continue to evaluate ecological impact and long-term performance of large-scale cleanup systems.
As of 2026, the project remains one of the most visible attempts to engineer technological solutions to global plastic pollution, operating through a combination of philanthropic funding, corporate partnerships, and public donations. In July 2026, the organization announced it had removed over 60 million kilograms (60,000 metric tons)
of trash from rivers and the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
Contents
History
The Ocean Cleanup project was founded in 2013 by Dutch inventor Boyan Slat after presenting a concept for passive ocean cleaning at a TED-talk the previous year. The organization began as a small volunteer initiative before receiving crowd funding and other support that enabled early engineering studies and feasibility assessments. Independent reporting at the time noted both enthusiasm for the idea and skepticism from scientists as to whether large scale clean-up systems could operate in open ocean environments.
Between 2014 and 2017, the group conducted numerical modeling, scale-modeling tests, and coastal trials to determine how floating barriers behave in waves and currents.
2014–2017: Initial prototypes
The barriers would direct the floating plastic to the central platform, which would remove the plastic from the water.the design consisted of a tower detached from the floating barriers. This platform would collect the plastic using a conveyor belt. The floating barrier was proposed to be 100 km (62 mi) long. They conducted and published a feasibility study.
In 2015, this design won the London Design Museum Design of the Year, and the INDEX: Award. Later that year, scale model tests were conducted in wave pools at Deltares and MARIN, testing the dynamics and load of the barrier in ocean conditions, and gathering data for computational modeling. According to later reporting, the development process ultimately involved testing 273 scale models and six distinct prototypes before the organization finalized the design that preceded System 001.
A 100-metre (330 ft) segment went through a test in the North Sea in the summer of 2016. The test indicated that conventional oil containment booms would not stand up over time, and they changed the floater material to a hard-walled HDPE pipe.
In May 2017 changes to the conceptual design were made. This included reducing the length of the boom from 100 km (62 mi) to 2 km (1.2 mi) to increase unit scalability, replacing seabed anchors with sea anchors to allow it to drift with currents, and replacing the automatic system for removing accumulated plastic with a manual one.
System 001
On 9 September 2018, System 001 deployed from San Francisco. The ship Maersk Launcher towed the system to a position 240 nautical miles off the coast, where it was put through a series of sea trials. It consisted of a 600 m (2,000 ft) long barrier with a 3 m (9.8 ft) wide skirt hanging beneath it. It was unmanned and incorporated solar-powered monitoring and navigation systems, including GPS, cameras, lanterns and AIS. The barrier and the screen were produced by an Austrian supplier.
In October 2018 it was towed to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch for real-world duty. System 001 encountered difficulties retaining the plastic collected. The system collected debris, but soon lost it because the barrier did not retain a consistent speed through the water. In December, mechanical stress caused an 18-meter section to detach, and the rig was moved to Hawaii for inspection and repair. During the two months of operation, it had captured 2 metric tons of plastic.
In June 2019, after four months of root cause analyses and redesign, System 001/B was deployed, with a water-borne parachute to slow the system, and an extended cork line to hold the screen in place. This successfully captured smaller plastic, reduced the barrier size by two-thirds, and was easier to adjust offshore. However, System 001/B still did not adequately capture and retain debris.
System 002 and 03
Its ocean system consists of a funnel shaped floating barrier which is towed by two ships. The ocean system is deployed in oceanic gyres to collect marine debris. The project aims to launch 10 or more approximately 2 km-long (1.2 mi) systems which they predict could remove 50% of the debris in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch
In July 2021, a new design called System 002, also known as "Jenny", was deployed in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch for testing. System 002 was actively towed by two ships as opposed to System 001 which passively drifted. In October, the organization announced that the system had gathered 28,000 kilograms (62,000 lb) of trash. In October, the project announced plans for System 03, which would span up to 2.5 km (1.6 mi).By December, the project announced it had removed more than 150 tonnes of plastic from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and announced it would transition to the new longer System 03 the following year.
In May 2023, the project deployed its System 03 barrier, 2,250 meters long. The system included a retention zone where material is held before it is removed from the water, with the nets' mesh size there being increased from 10 to 15 mm. This is to allow marine life such as fish and turtles to escape, and to allow smaller creatures such as blue buttons and violet snails to pass through.
System 03 has about 5x the capacity of System 002, which is why they dropped a 0 from the naming scheme: [O]ur modeling suggests it may be possible to clean the entire GPGP with as few as 10 systems. That's why we knocked off one of the zeroes from '002' when we named '03' – we no longer need a three-figure amount of systems to clean all five ocean garbage patches around the world.In June 2024, the project claimed that it had removed 15 million kilograms (33 million lb) of marine trash from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and from key polluting rivers around the world since 2019.
River Interceptors
In October 2019, The Ocean Cleanup unveiled a barrier for river cleanup, The Interceptor, to intercept river plastic and prevent it from reaching the ocean. Two systems were deployed in Jakarta (Indonesia) and Klang (Malaysia).
In January 2020, flooding broke the barrier of Interceptor 001 in Jakarta. It was replaced with a newer model with a stronger screen, simpler design, and an adjustable better-defined weak link. A third Interceptor was deployed in Santo Domingo, in the Dominican Republic. In December, The Ocean Cleanup announced they would start large-scale production of the Interceptor series.
In 2021, Interceptor systems were enhanced to be able to tackle a wider range of rivers. The Interceptor Barricade was deployed in 2023 on the Rio Vaca, in Guatemala, its first high-volume river. Following strong rainfall in April 2024, the Interceptor Barricade successfully captured 1,400,000 kg of waste in a matter of hours.
In July 2022, an Interceptor Original was deployed near the mouth of Ballona Creek in southwestern Los Angeles County, California. This was the first Interceptor Original installed in the United States, and the second of its kind to be deployed globally.
The system in Ballona Creek in Los Angeles cost about $1.3 million to design and permit, and $1.5 million for the barges and installation. Annual costs approach $650,000. OC covers these costs. Ballona Creek drains ~130 sq mi (340 km2) of urban land. This system collected 143,710 pounds of trash in 2025, reducing the need for beach cleanups and other mitigations.
As of 2026, 26 Interceptor systems operated in the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Honduras, India, Indonesia, Jamaica, Malaysia, Panama, the Philippines, Thailand, the United States, and Vietnam.
The 30 Cities Program
At the United Nations Oceans Conference in 2025, the Ocean Cleanup announced it was launching the 30 Cities Program, an initiative to stop up to 1/3 of all plastic pollution coming from rivers into the ocean by 2030 by targeting 30 of the world's most polluting urban centers.
Design
Ocean system
The 03 design uses a towed floating structure. The structure acts as a containment boom. A permeable screen underneath the float catches subsurface debris and funnels it into the Retention Zone which serves as a debris catch. The Retention Zone is monitored by underwater cameras. If an animal is spotted in the Retention Zone, the Marine Animal Safety Hatch (MASH) is activated, blocking off any further entrance into the Retention Zone while opening an exit hatch and giving the animal a clear route out.
Crewed boats tow the approximately 2.2 km U-shaped barrier through the water at 1.5 knots. The ship is steered to areas with higher waste densities. As of August 2025, the floating system has removed almost 500,000 kg of plastic from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
River system
An Interceptor Barricade system consists of two barges. A V-shaped floating boom directs flotsam into one barge. An automated shuttle then transfers it into six dumpsters on the other barge, with total capacity of around a single dump truck, all powered by overhead-mounted solar panels. The material is then directed to refuse facilities.
The Interceptor project is similar to a smaller-scale local project called Mr. Trash Wheel developed in 2008 for Maryland's Baltimore harbor.
Research
Oceanic expeditions
In August 2015, The Ocean Cleanup conducted the Mega Expedition, in which a fleet of approximately 30 vessels, with lead ship R/V Ocean Starr, crossed the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and mapped an area of 3.5 million square kilometers. The expedition collected data on the size, concentration and total mass of the plastic in the patch. According to the organization, this expedition collected more data on oceanic plastic pollution than the last 40 years combined.
In September and October 2016, The Ocean Cleanup launched the Aerial Expedition, in which a C-130 Hercules aircraft conducted the first ever series of aerial surveys to map the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. The goal was specifically to quantify the amount of large debris, including ghost nets in the patch. Slat stated that the crew saw more debris than expected.
The project released an app called The Ocean Cleanup Survey App, which enables others to survey the ocean for plastic, and report their observations.
Scientific findings
In February 2015, the research team published a study in Biogeosciences about the vertical distribution of plastic, based on samples collected in the North Atlantic Gyre. They found that plastic concentration decreases exponentially with depth, with the highest concentration at the surface, and approaching zero just a few meters deeper. A follow-up paper was published in Scientific Reports in October 2016.
In June 2017, researchers published a paper in Nature Communications, with a model of the river plastic input into the ocean. Their model estimates that between 1.15 and 2.41 million metric tons of plastic enter the world's oceans every year, with 86% of the input stemming from rivers in Asia. In December 2017, they published a paper in Environmental Science & Technology about pollutants in oceanic plastic they had sampled.
In March 2018, they published a paper in Scientific Reports, summarizing the combined findings from the two expeditions. They estimated that the Patch contains 1.8 trillion pieces of floating plastic, with a total mass of 79,000 metric tons. Microplastics (< 0.5 cm) make up 94% of the pieces, accounting for 8% of the mass. The study suggests that the amount of plastic in the patch increased exponentially since 1970.
In September 2019, they published a paper in Scientific Reports studying why emissions into the ocean are higher than the estimates of debris accumulated at the surface layer of the ocean. They argue that debris circulation dynamics offer an explanation for this missing plastic and suggest that there is a significant amount of time between initial emissions and accumulation offshore. The study also indicated that current microplastics are mostly a result of the degradations of plastic produced in the 1990s or before. A follow-up study in May 2020 showed that part of the plastic at the surface of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is breaking down into microplastics and sinking to the deep sea. Most debris is still found at the surface, with 90% in the first 5 meters.
In October 2019, other researchers estimated that most ocean plastic pollution comes from cargo ships, with a majority from Chinese cargo ships alone.
Funding
The Ocean Cleanup raised over US$2 million with the help of a crowdfunding campaign in 2014.
As of 2019, it was mainly funded by donations and in-kind sponsors, including Maersk, Salesforce.com chief executive Marc Benioff, Peter Thiel, Julius Baer Foundation, The Coca-Cola Company and Royal DSM.
In 2019, it received a 10 million AUD award from the Macquarie Group Foundation as part of its 50th anniversary celebration.
In October 2020, they unveiled a product made from plastic certified from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, The Ocean Cleanup sunglasses, to help fund the continuation of the cleanup. They made 21,000 sunglasses, sold at €200 apiece. They worked with DNV GL to develop a certification for plastic from water sources and the sunglasses were certified to originate from the GPGP. The sunglasses were designed by Yves Béhar and manufactured by Safilo. They sold out in early 2022.
In October 2021, they were part of the #TeamSeas fundraising campaign led by YouTube celebrities Mark Rober and MrBeast, and received roughly half of the $30 million raised.
In 2022, Kia signed a seven-year deal to become a global partner of The Ocean Cleanup through funding and in-kind contributions. The partnership will fund the construction of a new Interceptor and will allow for recycled plastics to be used in the manufacturing process of Kia.
In early 2023 the organization received its largest private donation to date of $25 million from Joe Gebbia, co-founder of Airbnb.
In 2026, The Ocean Cleanup was announced as one of The Audacious Project's 2025 grantees. The organization received its largest single donation to date from Audacious' donor pool, $121 million, which will go towards implementing their 30 Cities Program.
Efficacy issues and possible negative impacts
Criticisms and doubts about method, feasibility, efficiency and return on investment have been raised in the scientific community. Miriam Goldstein, director of ocean policy at the Center for American Progress, stated in 2019 that compared to the ocean system, devices closer to shore are easier to maintain, and would likely recover more plastic per dollar spent overall.
The team has expressed their own concerns that the devices could imperil sea life, including neustons, communities of pleustons, Portuguese man-of-war, sea snails, and sail jellyfish that live near the ocean surface, and have monitored for such impacts. A modelling study concluded that it is currently impossible to determine how damaging at-sea plastic removal strategies (such as those of The Ocean Cleanup) would be for marine life, with impacts potentially ranging from mild to severe.
It is understood that this approach alone cannot solve the whole problem. Plastic in the oceans is spread far beyond the gyres; experts estimate that less than 5% of all the plastic pollution which enters the oceans makes its way into any of the garbage patches, with the majority of plastic waste ending up on coastlines and beaches.
Recognition
The project and its founder have been recognized in many fora.
2014 Champion of the Earth – The United Nations Environment Programme.
One of the 20 Most Promising Young Entrepreneurs Worldwide – Intel EYE50.
2015 London Design Museum Design of the Year.
2015 INDEX: Award.
2015 Fast Company Innovation By Design Award in the category Social Good.
2015 100 Global Thinkers — Foreign Policy.
2016 Katerva award.
2017 Norwegian Shipowners' Association's Thor Heyerdahl award.
2019 Macquarie 50th Anniversary Award.
2020 Dutch Design Awards.
2024 Time100 Climate.