Boyan Slat was a Dutch teenager on a family scuba diving trip in the Greek islands when he felt the first sting of ocean plastic — and decided to do something about it. Fifteen years later, the 26-year-old's nonprofit, Ocean Cleanup, is deploying mechanized trash interceptors in Los Angeles and San Gabriel rivers before the 2028 Olympics, a watershed moment for one of the world's most visible sources of ocean pollution.
The stakes are enormous. Rivers worldwide are the arteries of ocean plastic, responsible for an estimated 80 percent of the garbage that ends up poisoning marine ecosystems. In Los Angeles County alone, concrete flood channels spill countless tons of trash into the Pacific, strangling seabirds, suffocating fish, and fouling the beaches that define California's relationship with the sea. What makes this intervention different is that it targets plastic before it reaches the open ocean — a shift in strategy that Slat credits with reshaping his organization's entire mission.
The proof is already in the water. Ocean Cleanup installed a plastic-blocking device in Ballona Creek near Marina del Rey in October 2022, and it has already captured 206 tons of garbage that would have otherwise drifted toward the Pacific. The two new interceptors in Los Angeles and San Gabriel rivers will use similar technology, featuring a trash-catching boom that stretches 1.3 miles. Los Angeles County will operate the new systems at an annual cost of between $2 million and $4 million — a modest investment for coastal communities suffocating under years of accumulated debris.
"By bringing these interceptors here now to the two other rivers, we should be able to call plastic pollution in Santa Monica Bay and San Pedro Bay a thing of the past," Slat said in a recent interview. "It's something to look forward to."
The journey to this moment has been far from straight. When the author first interviewed Slat in 2018, he was preparing to launch a massive cleanup device into the Great Pacific Garbage Patch itself — the largest of several rotating ocean gyres that attract waste like giant drains. That ambitious mid-ocean approach suffered devastating setbacks. One early system failed to effectively collect plastic and shattered in a ferocious storm. The organization came "close to financial death," Slat has acknowledged, forcing his team to fundamentally rethink their approach.
Pivoting toward rivers proved far more effective. Ocean Cleanup now operates globally with an annual budget of roughly $50 million and 200 full-time employees, focusing on 30 cities that spew disproportionate amounts of ocean-bound waste. The organization has already installed interceptors in developing nations like Malaysia, Jamaica, Guatemala, and Indonesia, where inadequate waste management infrastructure makes rivers particularly lethal conduits for plastic. The long-term vision is even more expansive: Slat aims to eventually trap and remove plastic in 200 cities worldwide.
Critics have pointed out that source reduction — producing less plastic in the first place — remains essential. Slat doesn't dispute this. But he insists that while the world works toward systemic change, it must simultaneously remove the plastic already choking oceans and entering the food chain. "Everything works now," he said. "We know what to do. It's just about execution. Execution and funding. Humanity now has all the tools it needs to get back to a clean ocean."