Boyan Slat was born on July 27, 1994. He is a Dutch inventor and business leader. Before becoming the chief executive officer of The Ocean Cleanup, he studied aerospace engineering.

Initial interest in plastic pollution

In 2011, Slat went scuba diving in Greece and noticed that there was more plastic in the water than there were fish in the area he explored. He chose to study ocean plastic pollution for a high school project, focusing on why cleaning up plastic seemed nearly impossible. Later, he developed an idea for a system that uses moving ocean currents to collect plastic waste. He shared this idea during a TEDx talk in Delft in 2012.

Slat stopped his studies in aerospace engineering at TU Delft to focus on improving his idea. In 2013, he started an organization called The Ocean Cleanup. Soon after, his TEDx talk became widely shared on news websites. In 2017, Slat wrote in The Economist: "Technology is the most powerful tool for change. It helps us do things we could not do before. Unlike other ways of creating change, which change how society is structured, technology creates new ways to solve problems."

The Ocean Cleanup

In 2013, Slat started a non-profit organization called The Ocean Cleanup, where he works as the CEO. The group’s goal is to create new technologies to remove plastic from the world’s oceans. The organization collected US$2.2 million through an online donation campaign with help from 38,000 people in 159 countries. In June 2014, The Ocean Cleanup shared a 528-page study to check if the project could work. Some people said the idea was not possible after reviewing the study on the Deep Sea News website, and other publications like Popular Science and The Guardian also reported this.

Since starting, The Ocean Cleanup has received tens of millions of dollars in donations from business leaders in Europe and Silicon Valley, including Marc Benioff, the CEO of Salesforce.

The first two systems, called Systems 001 and 001/B, had technical problems. System 001 could not hold plastic well and suffered damage that caused an 18-meter part to break off. However, in 2019, System 001/B, which was redesigned, successfully collected plastic. This mission, which included both systems, collected 60 bags of trash.

In July 2021, System 002, an improved version, gathered 9,000 kilograms (20,000 pounds) of trash.

At the introduction of a new cleanup system called The Interceptor, Slat shared research showing that 1,000 of the world’s most polluted rivers are responsible for about 80% of global plastic pollution. To reduce plastic entering oceans, The Ocean Cleanup created a solar-powered, barge-like system designed to be used worldwide. As of mid-2022, these interceptors were placed in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Dominican Republic, and Vietnam, and were ready to be used in Thailand and Los Angeles, California.

Awards and recognition

• In November 2014, Slat received the Champions of the Earth award from the United Nations Environment Programme.
• In 2015, King Harald of Norway gave Slat the Young Entrepreneur Award.
• In 2016, Forbes included Slat in their 30 Under 30 list.
• In 2011, Peter Thiel, a venture capitalist and co-founder of PayPal, started the Thiel Fellowship. This program gives $100,000 to entrepreneurs who are 22 years old or younger and have left or delayed college to work on their start-up. Slat was selected for this program.
• In February 2017, Reader's Digest named Slat European of the Year. The Dutch magazine Elsevier also awarded him Nederlander van het Jaar 2017 (Dutchman of the Year 2017).
• In 2018, Slat was awarded the Leonardo da Vinci International Art Award and the Euronews award "European Entrepreneur of the Year."
• In 2020, the Project Management Institute honored Slat with the Future 50 Leaders award.
• In 2024, Time Magazine named Slat as one of the 100 most influential people on its Climate list.
• In 2025, Slat was featured on Forbes' Sustainability Leaders List and The Independent's Climate 100 List.