Age 18, Boyan devised a concept which utilises the natural oceanic forces to passively catch and concentrate ocean plastic, through which the theoretical cleanup time could be reduced from millennia to mere years. In February 2013 he dropped out of his Aerospace Engineering study at TU Delft to start The Ocean Cleanup.
As The Ocean Cleanup’s CEO, Boyan currently gives lead to a team of about 80 people, but spends most of his time on research and engineering, through which he co-authored about a dozen scientific papers and multiple patents.
After 4 years of reconnaissance expeditions, testing and many design iterations, on September 8 2018 the world’s first ocean cleanup system was launched from San Francisco, soon after followed by deployment inside the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
The Ocean Cleanup