Photo: Ocean Cleanup.
Ocean Plastic doing its 100th cleanup in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, where an estimated 100,000 tons of plastic have accumulated.
Today I’m sharing an organization’s website describing its work to clean up plastic in the Pacific Ocean. Ocean Cleanup uses the natural circulation of currents to sequester the garbage in several hotspots so they can remove it.
Excerpts from the website: “Plastic [in the Pacific] accumulates in five ocean garbage patches, the largest one being the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, located between Hawaii and California. To solve it, we not only need to prevent plastic from accumulating into the ocean, but also clean up what is already out there. Floating plastics trapped in the patches will keep circulating until they break down into smaller and smaller pieces, becoming harder to clean up and increasingly easier to mistake for food by sealife. …
“The Great Pacific Garbage Patch [GPGP] poses a severe threat to marine life, ecosystems, and human health. Animals often mistake plastic for food, while ghost nets — making up 46% of the patch — cause deadly entanglements. As plastic floats at sea, [it] can enter the food chain through bioaccumulation, potentially contaminating seafood. Beyond ecological and health impacts, microplastics also disrupt oceanic carbon sequestration, with estimated annual losses ranging from 15 to 30 million metric tons of carbon. …
“After the Transpacific Yacht Race [in 2025], sailors helped our research team in two key scientific areas: sailors tagged GPS buoys to megaplastics found at sea, allowing us to track their movement, and mounted ADIS [our Automated Debris Imaging System] on their boats to help identify plastic hotspots.
“After years of engineering development and strategic partnership agreements, the Ocean Cleanup became the first ever organization to remove plastic pollution from the GPGP – and it remains the only one to this day.
“We captured our first plastic from the GPGP in 2019, and by 2021, our technology was proven. Since then, we’ve removed hundreds of tons of trash from the GPGP — mostly plastic coming from fishing gear.
“In 2022, we began … upgrading components while continuing cleanup. …
“Since 2024, [we’ve] begun working on optimizing our efficiency even more. Through hotspot hunting, we can address our cleanup efforts in areas with higher quantity of plastic, while decreasing our environmental impact.
“The circulating currents in the garbage patch move the plastic around, creating natural ever-shifting hotspots of higher concentration. With the help of computational modeling, we predict where these hotspots are and place the cleanup systems in these areas.
“Our floating systems are designed to capture plastics ranging from small pieces, just millimeters in size, up to large debris, including massive, discarded fishing nets (ghost nets). After fleets of systems are deployed into every ocean gyre, combined with inflow source prevention, the Ocean Cleanup aims to remove 90% of floating ocean plastic by 2040.
“It is estimated that 100,000 tons of plastic float in the GPGP. We work with renowned partners to repurpose our catch into meaningful products – to prevent plastic ending up in the natural environment.
“We aim to rid the oceans of plastic in the most responsible way possible. Our mission is intended to benefit the ocean and its inhabitants, so we place protection of the marine environment and mitigation of any negative impact of our operations at the forefront of our ocean cleaning operations.
“[Our] ocean cleaning technology has deterrents, cameras, escape aids, and other features to minimize risk to marine wildlife. We also have trained independent observers on board the vessels each trip to monitor any interactions with protected species (such as turtles or whales) in the area. Monitoring data has confirmed that our operations are having only minimal effects on the environment.”
Learn more about their plastic-capture techniques at the Ocean Cleanup, here.
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