The Ocean Cleanup

“And what we found is that just one percent of the world's rivers do, you know, roughly 80% of all the plastic emissions. So it's very concentrated, and mostly in, indeed, these, you know, big coastal cities in, in middle-income countries.”

“So you can argue that it's like hundreds of tons of plastic in the ocean today because of environmental lawyers.”

“It sweeps an area of ocean clean the size of a football field every five seconds.”

“Regular fisheries usually has a bycatch rate of around, you know, 10, 15% on average. I mean, arguably a hundred percent because the thing they do is catch sealant. But yeah, we have average roughly 0.1%.”

“It's the largest self-propelled system ever deployed on the ocean. It's a mile and a half long, approximately.”

“So back in 2018, you know, of course we had done hundreds of scale model tests, lab tests, et cetera, but then we said, okay, let's just build the full scale thing in one go. It was this big launch in San Francisco, took the thing out. It was you know, we were…”

“Our budget right now is, is around fifty million a year.”

“Even people who run nonprofits that clean plastic by hand off beaches, like they are at times like very critical about what we do. So it's like, okay, clearly it's not about the cleanup part. You're not against removing plastic from the environment. You're jus…”

“University is, is kind of a means to an end. I think, you know, I employ a lot of people that do have engineering degrees. Of course we need those. But I don't think it's necessarily the right path for everyone. And, you know, if you can reach your goals witho…”

“So there are five areas in the world where the plastic, once it's in the ocean, converges and concentrates. The largest one is this Great Pacific Garbage Patch between Hawaii and California. And yeah, there's roughly two hundred and fifty million pounds of pla…”

“I think the main hurdle is just that it's new, it's different. There's not a you know, a certain category of permit for Interceptors, you know, plastic interceptors. So so I think that's the main issue. It's not a question of, you know, are they unwilling to s…”

“To solve the, you know, the global inflow and to clean up the legacy pollution. If we want to do that over the next 10 years, you're talking about a few hundred million per year for the whole.”

“Up to, you know, like a big gifts from people like Mark Benioff Joe Gebbia as well as some companies. So, you know, Maersk, the shipping company is, is a big backer. Kia, the car company.”

“Oh, well, without mentioning names, of course, but we've definitely been in situations where you're being asked for you know, for bribes and things like that.”

“It's our view that if you want to quickly stop plastic from polluting the ocean, you should probably first focus on that 0.1% rather than the whole thing.”

“And yeah, I think in about nine months time, we should be at the point that we can say, Hey, we're ready. We're ready for this. The technology is ready. Now it's just up to the willingness of the world to make this happen and make it scale.”

“For the Great Pacific Garbage Patch if we get to nominal performance, you know, which is the goal for the next nine months with our current system, we would need about 10 of those systems to get the job done in 10 years.”

“So for example, Malaysia there, it's a local real estate developer that is our boots on the ground. You know, they, Want to develop real estate along the river, but their problem is that it's one of the most polluting rivers in the world. So by supporting us, …”