The Ocean Cleanup's $21.7 Million in 2017 and What Happened Next

In spring 2017 the Dutch non-profit The Ocean Cleanup reported that it had raised $21.7 million, enough to move from small tests to full-scale trials of its plastic-catching barrier in the Pacific Ocean. The money came from private donors rather than governments, and it paid for the systems that, after several failures and redesigns, began landing large amounts of plastic from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in 2021 and 2022.

The Ocean Cleanup Raised $21.7 Million for Pacific Trials in 2017

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This article explains what the 2017 funding was for, how the idea developed, what the systems actually achieved, how big the garbage patch really is, and why some ocean scientists remain sceptical.

What the 2017 funding round paid for

The Ocean Cleanup's plan was to build long floating barriers that would drift with currents and concentrate floating plastic so that it could be collected and brought ashore. Until 2017 the project had been tested only in short sections and computer models. The new money was meant to fund a first full-size system in the North Pacific, between Hawaii and California, where currents gather floating debris.

According to CNBC, the organisation had raised about $2.2 million through a 2014 crowdfunding campaign backed by some 38,000 people in 160 countries, followed by roughly $10 million in donations from tech and European entrepreneurs. Salesforce chief executive Marc Benioff was among the named donors; Peter Thiel, whose fellowship programme Slat had joined, was reported as another backer. Slat also said the Dutch government had contributed, but that he did not want to rely on public money because subsidy cycles were slower than his testing cycles.

The 2017 round was announced shortly before a public event in Utrecht on 11 May 2017, where the team presented a significantly changed design.

Boyan Slat and the idea behind the project

Boyan Slat, born in July 1994, first presented the concept at a TEDx talk in his home city in 2012, while still a teenager. The core idea was simple: rather than chasing plastic with boats and nets, let the ocean's own currents bring the plastic to a fixed collector. He began studying aerospace engineering at TU Delft but left the course to work on the project full time, founding The Ocean Cleanup in 2013.

Slat has argued that environmental work too often settles for small, local gestures. He has described his own approach as the opposite: work out how large a solution needs to be, then reason backwards from there. Speaking to CNBC in 2017, he also admitted openly that he had expected the venture might fail, and that it still could.

His early talk was widely shared with the claim that the system could remove more than seven million tonnes of plastic. That number should be treated with caution. Later scientific estimates put the total mass of plastic in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch at around 80,000 tonnes, so the early figure did not describe what any barrier there could realistically collect.

The Ocean Cleanup

From the North Sea test to the redesigned barrier

In summer 2016 the team moored a 100-metre test section in the North Sea, about 14 miles (23 km) off the Dutch coast, for several months. The point was less about catching plastic than about learning how the structure survived waves and storms. One lesson was that ordinary oil-spill booms wore out, so the floater was switched to rigid high-density polyethylene pipe.

The May 2017 redesign changed the concept substantially. The original plan for a 100-kilometre barrier anchored to the seabed was dropped in favour of shorter, roughly 2-kilometre sections held by sea anchors, so the system could drift with the currents while moving more slowly than the plastic. Collected plastic would be removed by ship rather than by a fixed platform like the one shown in early illustrations.

Hip Daily

What the Pacific systems actually collected

The first full system, System 001, left San Francisco in September 2018. It did not go to plan: it struggled to hold on to the plastic it gathered, and in December an 18-metre section broke off. In about two months it collected roughly two tonnes. A modified version, System 001/B, went out in June 2019 with a parachute anchor and an extended cork line. It caught smaller pieces but still did not retain debris reliably.

The breakthrough came with a different approach. System 002, nicknamed "Jenny", was deployed in August 2021 and towed slowly by two vessels in a U-shape. By the end of July 2022 it had collected 101,353 kg of plastic, bringing the total from all of the organisation's Pacific systems to 108,526 kg, over an area of more than 3,000 square kilometres. Slat said the technology was now validated.

A larger System 03, about 2,250 metres long and with a wider 15 mm mesh intended to let marine life escape, followed in 2023. The organisation also builds "Interceptors" for rivers, which catch plastic before it reaches the sea, including sites in Jakarta, Malaysia, Los Angeles and Guatemala. By 2026, it said it had removed more than 60,000 tonnes from rivers and the ocean combined, most of it from rivers.

How big is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, really?

A 2018 study estimated the patch at about 1.6 million square kilometres, roughly twice the size of Texas or three times the size of France. The same work put the mass at about 80,000 tonnes and the number of pieces at about 1.8 trillion. Microplastics made up about 94 percent of the pieces but only around 8 percent of the mass.

Two common myths are worth correcting. The patch is not a floating island you could walk on, and it cannot be seen from satellites. It is a vast area where plastic fragments are more concentrated than elsewhere, at a density low enough that it can be hard to notice from a boat. Much of the larger debris is fishing gear: a 2018 study found that nets made up nearly half the mass.

The Inertia

Criticism and open questions

Cost versus impact. Some ocean scientists, including Miriam Goldstein of the Center for American Progress, have argued that the money could remove far more plastic if spent on waste management and prevention.
Marine life. A modelling study concluded that it is not yet possible to say how much harm at-sea plastic removal does to the animals that live at the surface, with possible effects ranging from mild to severe. The larger mesh on System 03 was one response.
Scale of the problem. Less than 5 percent of ocean plastic is thought to reach the garbage patches. Most of it sinks, washes ashore or breaks into microplastics, so offshore cleanup alone cannot solve the issue.

Supporters reply that the patch will not disappear on its own, that larger debris breaks into microplastics over time, and that the river Interceptors directly address the prevention side.

What readers can take from it

The story of the 2017 funding is a useful example of how ambitious environmental technology really develops. The headline promise was large, the first full-scale attempts failed in public, and the system that eventually worked looked quite different from the original drawings.

For individuals, the lesson from the research is that stopping plastic at the source matters most: reducing single-use plastic, supporting better waste collection where it is lacking, and backing rules on lost fishing gear. Cleanup projects can help, but they work best alongside those measures, not instead of them.

Sources: CNBC, 20 April 2017; The Ocean Cleanup (Wikipedia); Boyan Slat (Wikipedia); Great Pacific garbage patch (Wikipedia); NL Times, 1 August 2022; The Ocean Cleanup (official site). Images: upcycling.cz, The Ocean Cleanup, Hip Daily, The Inertia.

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