FIRST 100,000 KG REMOVED FROM THE GREAT PACIFIC GARBAGE PATCH



Today, the Ocean Cleanup officially cleared more than 100,000 tonnes of plastic from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, marking an exciting new milestone for our Pacific Ocean operation (GPGP).

System 002 (also known as "Jenny") has already gathered 101,353 kg of plastic across 45 extractions since its deployment in August 2021, scanning an area of ocean more than 3000km2—roughly the size of Luxembourg or Rhode Island. The Ocean Cleanup has now gathered 108,526 kg of plastic from the GPGP, which is more than the combined weight of two and a half Boeing 737-800s or the dry weight of a space shuttle. This is in addition to the 7,173 kg of plastic recovered by our earlier prototype systems.

The overall quantity of collected plastic is 79,000,000 kg, or 100,000,000 kg if we add the Outer GPGP, according to our 2018 research in which we mapped the patch. Thus, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch will be eliminated if we carry out this 100,000 kilogram haul 1,000 times.


I'm pleased for The Ocean Cleanup team that they have reached this milestone, which is much the more impressive given that System 002 is still a test system. We are now prepared to move on to our new and expanded System 03, which is anticipated to capture plastic at a rate potentially 10 times higher than System 002 through a combination of increased size, improved efficiency, and increased uptime. Now that our technology has been validated, we can move on to other projects. We are started the process of moving to System 3.

We follow the Chain of Custody standard set by DNV, which is unique. This third-party accreditation ensures that every gram of plastic originated in the ocean. You may learn more about the verification process for our plastic catch here.

With System 03, we are currently scaling up to the following stage of our cleaning. Let's put another zero after our catch statistics now!
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