Teen designs method of cleaning up plastic rubbish in oceans

Nineteen-year-old Dutchman Boyan Slat believes he has found a way to clean up giant areas of floating plastic rubbish in the world's oceans. He is the founder of The Ocean Cleanup, and has designed floating platforms which use solar and wind energy to catch the plastic detritus in our oceans in a central spot for extraction. The United Nations Environment Program estimates that millions of tons of plastic have entered the oceans, and that the piles, known as gyres, contain on average six times more plastic than zooplankton. A feasibility study on Boyan Slat's system has just been completed, and he believes by deploying the proposed system for ten years, almost half of the plastic within the Great Pacific Garbage Patch could be removed.