For this episode of Ecolution, RTÉ's climate podcast for young people, we're out on the water, and these days the deep blue has a lot of things floating that shouldn’t be there - especially plastic!
Did you know 32% of the 78 million tons of plastic packaging produced annually is left to flow into our oceans?! That's the equivalent of pouring one rubbish truck of plastic into the ocean every minute. It sounds overwhelming, but a group called The Ocean Cleanup have decided to take on arguably the biggest cleanup job in history.
Subscribe to Ecolution on RTÉ, Apple or Spotify - press play up top to listen now!
The Ocean Cleanup is a non-profit organization developing and scaling technologies to rid the oceans of plastic. To achieve this objective, they use a dual strategy, turning off the tap as well as removing the waste that's already there. They use deep research to discover where the most waste reaches the sea, intercepting plastic in rivers to cut the inflow of pollution and cleaning up what has already accumulated in the ocean that won’t go away by itself. They have stated that their aim is to put themselves out of business.
One area they have been targeting is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a floating island of waste that sits in the ocean between California and Hawaii and takes up an area twice the size of France!
The non-profit organisation was founded by Boyan Slat, a young inventor and entrepreneur who started very early. While on vacation in Greece at 16 years old, Boyan was SCUBA diving and saw more plastic bags than fish in the sea, which left him thinking: "Why can’t we just clean this up?"
He started looking into the problem and possible technology solutions to clean up ocean plastic pollution, dedicating a school project to developing his idea further. He presented his ideas at a TEDx Conference in late 2012. In February 2013, the TEDx video suddenly went viral, and the momentum that followed allowed Boyan to drop out of his Aerospace Engineering degree to officially found The Ocean Cleanup.
Their stated aim is to rid our waters of 90% of ocean plastics by 2040!
For the episode we spoke with Matthias Egger, Director of Environmental & Social Affairs at The Ocean Cleanup. He spoke about how he became involved, how they work so effectively and why he has hope for the future. And we meet young people who competed in the EcoUnesco Young Environmentalist Awards this year with projects all about our rivers and oceans.
Visit The Ocean Cleanup site to find out more about the group at theoceancleanup.com.
On RTÉ Kids Youtube our panel discuss their favourite good news stories about our environment - check out the YouTube playlist here. It's all very positive this week, and we always want to tell you about the good people doing great work!
Ecolution is produced by Nicky Coghlan, with production assistance from Aoife O'Neill. It's hosted by Evie Kenny.
And for more great audio content for young people visit rte.ie/jrpodcasts.
