The Great Pacific Garbage Patch was cleared of a quarter million pounds of plastic

Last year, after experimenting with a new cleaning tool, Boyan Slat proudly declared that “The Great Pacific Garbage Patch can now be cleaned.”

System 02 (also known as "Jenny") has now amassed 220,000 pounds of plastic across 45 extractions since its deployment in August 2021, covering an area of the water larger than 3,000 km2, which is similar to the size of Luxembourg or Rhode Island.

On his website, Slat wrote, ““Added to the 7,173 kg of plastic captured by our previous prototype systems, The Ocean Cleanup has now collected 108,526 kg of plastic from the “GPGP”—more than the combined weight of two and a half Boeing 737-800s, or the dry weight of a space shuttle,”

The entire weight of collected plastic is estimated to be roughly 79,000,000 kg, or 100,000,000 kg if one considers outside areas, based on a 2018 study conducted by The Ocean Cleanup to map the GPGP. Consequently, if this type of pick up is repeated 1,000 more times, the garbage patch will be gone.

While it's not very hopeful considering that 100,000 kg were extracted over the course of a year, which means it would take 1,000 years to clean the GPGP, so Slat has other suggestions.

“System 03, which is expected to capture plastic at a rate potentially 10 times higher than System 002 through a combination of increased size, improved efficiency, and increased uptime, will be starting soon,” Slat announced.

Despite the fact that the capture area is practically a net and is close to two miles in length, less than a quarter of the overall catch is made up of fish or other marine animals.