Learn how The Ocean Cleanup is using innovative technologies to clean up plastic in the world's waterways and what you can do to help.
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The Ocean Cleanup's Head of Communications Joost Dubois will talk about the nonprofit that uses a 1.4-mile net-like screen connected to two ships to slowly skim the water's surface and collect plastic.
Annually, 1 to 2.4 million tons of plastic waste enter oceans from rivers. The Ocean Cleanup is a Netherlands-based international nonprofit foundation founded in 2013 by Boyan Slat with the mission of ridding the ocean of plastic. By 2018, after several years of research and development, the foundation launched its first ocean cleanup solution, known as System 001, which it gave a trial run in its cleanup of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Located in the Pacific Ocean between Hawaii and California, it's the largest plastic waste accumulation zone in the oceans, covering an estimated surface area of 1.6 million square kilometers (Nearly 618,000 square miles).
The achievements of The Ocean Cleanup have been striking. As of November 2023, it has collected 328,000 kilograms (nearly 330 tons) of plastic from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, preventing it from degrading further into harmful microplastics that would otherwise enter the food chain. The Ocean Cleanup's ambitious target is to clean up 90 percent of the ocean's plastic by 2040. In contrast to other NGOs, The Ocean Cleanup perceives its work as a project – after reaching its target, the organization will cease to exist.
RefuseandReuse.org is a student-led non-profit organization that raises awareness about the harms of single-use plastic and raises money to donate to plastic cleanup efforts.
Students participating in the webinar will be asked to take a 1-Day Refuse Single-Use Plastic Challenge and share their results to receive a RefuseandReuse.org essentials bag. Participating schools will be allotting 3-hours of community service hours to each student who attends the webinar and takes the RefuseandReuse.org 1-Day Refuse Single-Use Plastic Challenge .