Engineering | Updates | The Ocean Cleanup

Interceptor 001 in Place After Extreme Flooding in Jakarta

Just as the New Year commenced, the city of Jakarta (Indonesia) experienced widespread flooding – some of the worst it has seen since 1996, and the highest record rainfall in…

Engineering, General

The Ocean Cleanup Unveils Plan to Address the Main Source of Ocean Plastic Pollution: Rivers

The Ocean Cleanup aims to tackle the 1,000 most polluting rivers, responsible for about 80% of ocean plastic pollution, before the end of 2025. Today, we unveiled the invention to…

Engineering, General

The Ocean Cleanup Successfully Catches Plastic in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch

Today, we announced that System 001/B is successfully capturing and collecting plastic debris. After one year of testing, we have succeeded in developing a self-contained system in the Great Pacific…

Engineering, General

Into the Twilight Zone

We have completed our test campaign with System 001/B . A consistent speed through the plastic has been achieved using the parachute anchor configuration, therefore, solving our main technical challenge…

Engineering

System Design Upgrades Completed, to be Relaunched in June

After the root cause analysis was finalized, the engineering team began working on solutions that we can start trialing in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in June. The upgraded design,…

Engineering, General

System 001 Learnings – Root Causes Summarized

In September, we launched our first system, with the aim of achieving proof of technology and commencing cleanup. Twenty years after the discovery of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, this…

Engineering, General

Wilson Update – Tweaking the System

It has been four weeks since we deployed System 001 in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (GPGP). In this time, we have observed that plastic is exiting the system once…

Engineering

System 001 Assembly Completed

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…

Engineering, General

The Final Design of the World’s First Cleanup System

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…

In May 2018, a 120-meter section of the system successfully passed a tow test in the Pacific Ocean, being subjected to waves of up to 5 meters.

Engineering, Testing

Successful Tow Test Validates System 001 Seaworthiness

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…