What awesome news!
Boyan Slat is just 20 years old. And received the UN Award 2014 for his great ecological invention!
Boyan Slat is founder of the innovative „The Ocean Cleanup initiative“
Boyan got the title of „Champion for the Earth“. The United Nation’s highest environmental accolade is awarded annually to leaders from government, civil society and the private sector, whose actions have had a significant and positive impact on the environment. Boyan will receive the award for his inspiring inspirational invention for cleaning the Ocean and get rid of plastic!
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The Inspiration and Action award, which has been won in previous years by Brian McClendon of Google Earth and Carlo Petrini, Founder of Slow Food, was awarded to Boyan Slat for his inspirational efforts to mobilize support to rid the ocean of marine litter.
Boyan Slat was still in secondary school when he came up with the idea of utilizing the natural ocean currents and winds to passively concentrate and transport floating plastic along solid floating barriers towards a central collection platform. According to the Ocean Cleanup’s recently published feasibility research, they estimate that almost half the Great Pacific Garbage Patch can be removed using this technology in ten years’ time.
It is hoped that The Ocean Cleanup initiative can contribute to ongoing worldwide efforts to tackle the escalating problem that widespread plastic waste is posing to marine life.
UN Under-Secretary-General and UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner said, “The marine litter problem is global in scale and intergenerational in impact, exacting tremendous ecological, economic, and social costs around the world. According to UNEP research conservative estimates of the overall financial damage of plastics to marine ecosystems now stand at US$13 billion each year.”
“Boyan Slat is inspiring people, organizations and governments to find solutions to the escalating threat of plastic debris in our oceans, while also serving as a reminder to us all that more work needs to be done to improve the capacity of all countries to better manage solid waste and to make production and consumption patterns far more sustainable so that we produce less waste, and put less pressure on our increasingly degraded ocean.”
Boyan Slat said, “I’m incredibly excited and honoured to receive this award on behalf of everyone at The Ocean Cleanup, a team of more than 100 people worldwide. Although we are still several years away from implementing the technology, I’m truly grateful that our hard work is already being recognized. We’ll continue to do our utmost to fulfill the expectations, and initiate the largest ocean cleanup in history.”
Visit www.theoceancleanup.com for more details.
Please support his project HERE
