Live Streams

On Thursday October 6, 2022, The Ocean Cleanup towed Interceptor 007 to its deployment location in Ballona Creek, Los Angeles County – USA.

To mark this checkpoint in our journey, The Ocean Cleanup broadcasted the entire towing operation live, simultaneously from on board Interceptor 007 in the Pacific Ocean and from The Ocean Cleanup HQ in Rotterdam where crew members (and special guests) monitored the operation, shared stories and discussed where we are and where we’re going with our mission.

On October 20, 2021, we officially announced that after the successful completion of System 002 test campaign, we have achieved proof of technology and are ready to return to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and start the cleanup.

On July 5^th, 2021 we gave a detailed update on the design of our next ocean cleanup system, System 002 at the annual IMarEST (Institute of Marine Engineering, Science & Technology) conference.

Boyan Slat presented our first product, sunglasses, made with ocean plastic certified from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, with 100% of the proceeds going directly to the next cleanup operations. Each pair of sunglasses is estimated to enable cleaning an equivalent of 24 football fields worth of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. 

On December 12, 2019, we announced that our first plastic catch is onshore and we shared our plans for this ocean plastic. We also took a moment to look back on Mission One and look forward to 2020.

On October 26, 2019, Boyan Slat presented the plan to address the main source of ocean plastic: rivers. The Interceptor is the first scalable solution to intercept river plastic pollution and can be deployed in the most polluting rivers around the world. 

On October 2, 2019, we announced that System 001/B was effectively capturing and collecting plastic debris. After one year of testing in the North Pacific, we succeeded in developing a self-contained system in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch that uses the natural forces of the ocean to passively catch and concentrate plastic.

After five years of research, engineering, and testing, on September 8, 2018, the world’s first ocean cleanup system was launched from our assembly yard in Alameda, California, toward the infamous Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

Following a design breakthrough, Boyan Slat announced on May 11, 2017, that we would be moving from one moored system design to a fleet of free-floating systems. This new design would make the cleanup operation more efficient and scalable.

The first prototype of the ocean cleanup system was unveiled on June 22, 2016 in Scheveningen Harbor, the Netherlands; called the North Sea Prototype 1, the purpose of this system was to test the survivability of the passive cleanup system design.

From a stage in New York City, on June 3, 2014, Boyan Slat delivered the long-awaited sequel to his famous 2012 TEDx Talk. The Feasibility Study was the outcome of a community working together to prove the feasibility of a passive ocean cleanup concept.