American Friends of The Ocean Cleanup, Foundation

The Ocean Cleanup develops advanced technologies to rid the world's oceans of plastic. The first garbage patch we aim to clean is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, located between California and Hawaii. We will have succeeded once the average buoyant plastic concentration in the oceanic accumulation zones has seen a 90% net mass reduction, relative to 2018 baseline levels by the year 2040.

In parallel to cleaning the ocean garbage patches we will stem the inflow of more plastic pollution from rivers. Our research found that 1000 rivers are responsible for roughly 80% of the pollution, which we aim to tackle by 2025.

To be able to solve the problem, we must first understand it. This is why The Ocean Cleanup invests in large-scale scientific research, both into the sources of the plastic pollution as well as the extend of the problem.

In our technology development we work together with experts across the fields and we test often with fast iteration cycles. E.g. before launching our first cleanup system in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in October 2018, we had designed and tested 273 scale models and 7 prototypes.


To clean the rivers we are focusing on building long lasting consortia, with local and global partners. The consortia will be responsible for deploying and operating the Interceptor, and ensuring the (plastic) debris is processed in the best possible way.

In our US and Dutch foundation combined we have an international team of over 140 individuals, with more than 15 nationalities, and totaling over 400 years of combined offshore project and engineering experience. We have an experienced board, supervisory board and a scientific advisory board. In addition, we work together with multiple partners (e.g. Maersk, Boskalis, Latham & Watkins, Deloitte), universities and governmental agencies.

Ocean:
After 5 years of designing, testing and research, we deployed the first cleanup system in 2018. System 001 was still an experimental system, and challenges were expected. In 2019 we deployed System 001/B a modular test system. With these systems we achieved the following:
- Proof of concept
- Consistent speed through plastic
- Capturing plastic of all size classes (incl. microplastics)

In 2021 we successfully tested System 002, an active plastic collection system. Since 2021, System 002 has collected more than 225,000 kg of plastic from The Great Pacific Garbage Patch. As of 2023, we are in the process of scaling System 002 to a larger and improved System 03. This scale-up is scheduled to be completed by the end of 2023.

Rivers:
Interceptors have been deployed at 19 locations in the world's most polluting rivers, across eight countries (USA, Thailand, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, Guatemala, Dominican Republic). In addition, strong relationships have been built with regional stakeholders to ensure stability and local integration for the duration of our validation phase.


Key research achievements include:
- First complete map of Great Pacific Garbage Patch: by crossing the patch with 30 vessels and an airplane, we found it contains 1.8 trillion pieces of plastic weighing 100,000 tons.
- First global map of riverine plastic emissions: researching the plastic inflow from rivers to the marine environment, based on both modelling and field research.