#1104 - Boyan Slat

Joe Rogan (0:02)

Three, two, one, yes. Hello Boyan.

Boyan Slat (0:06)

Hi there.

Joe Rogan (0:07)

Welcome.

Boyan Slat (0:08)

Thank you.

Joe Rogan (0:08)

Thanks for doing this, I really appreciate it. And I love what you're doing. I've seen your Ted Talk, I've seen many numerous conferences that you've appeared at and discussions you've given on this. And for people to jump into this right now, what you've done is think long and hard and devise a method to try to clean up some of the plastic that we have floating around in the ocean. Famously, the Pacific Garbage Patch, this enormous patch of garbage that's between California and Hawaii.

How did you get involved in this and what you're a young guy, how old are you?

Boyan Slat (0:44)

23 already.

Joe Rogan (0:45)

23 already? You sound like, oh my god, I'm so old.

How old were you when you started this?

Boyan Slat (0:50)

I think I started thinking about this when I was 16 and founded this organization when I was 18

Joe Rogan (0:56)

That's crazy. All you lazy fucks out there that are 16 years old that aren't doing shit with your life, just think about this kid.

That's amazing. I'm so happy there's people like you in the world.

Boyan Slat (1:07)

Thank you. Yeah.

Joe Rogan (1:08)

So you started thinking about it when you were 16, and this is something that is extremely disturbing to anybody that's paid attention, especially when you see the birds that have died with all these plastic bottle caps inside their bodies, and you see their carcasses with these multi-colored caps in them, and they thought these things were food. It was just one of the many, many, many problems that occur when you have plastic floating around in just enormous numbers in the ocean.

Boyan Slat (1:38)

Sure, yeah. I mean, there's really three problems with this plastic. First of all, obviously, the ecosystem damage. I think there are around about 800 species that actually could go extinct because of this plastic pollution.

Second, there's the economic threat in terms of damage to fisheries, damage to tourism and things like that. I think it's around $13 billion a year, according to the UN. And then thirdly, there's the health impact or the potential health impact because these tiny plastic pieces, they actually also end up in the fish we eat that take chemicals with it, and that ends up on our dinner plate as well.

Joe Rogan (2:15)

So, what was it that prompted you to dedicate, essentially dedicate your young life to this?

Boyan Slat (2:22)

Sure. Yeah. So, I've always been very passionate about technology and just building things. I think sort of having an idea in your mind and then seeing that become reality and being able to touch it and things like that. I think there's literally no better feeling in the world than that. So I've been building my own things since I was two years old, I think, first starting with things like tree houses and ziplines, but then going into sort of computers and explosives and rockets and things like that, which was a lot of fun, but it wasn't very useful, I would say. So it's kind of looking for something, sort of something that's real to work on, a real problem.

And that's what I then came across when I was 16 years old, I was scuba diving in Greece, and I came across more plastic bags than fish, and I wondered why can't we just clean this up?

And that question sort of kept circling around in my head, and I sort of thought about how could we do this? The ocean is pretty big. I then eventually came up with this idea to use these natural ocean currents to let us collect the plastic.

Joe Rogan (3:26)

And so how do you have many different prototypes that you started with and you eventually wound up with what you have now, and have you started implementing them yet?

Boyan Slat (3:36)

Oh yeah, I mean, so the concept that was presented back in 2012 with my first TEDx talk, and if you compare that to where we are right now, it's sort of day and night of a difference.

So yeah, through testing and through all these prototypings, obviously there has been a lot of development there. But the key idea has stayed the same, that instead of going after the plastic with boats and nets, which will take around about 79,000 years to clean up just this great Pacific garbage patch, instead of doing that, we let the plastic come to us. So we use basically a network, a fleet of very long floating barriers, which are oriented in a U shape, and they float around and they kind of act like a massive Pac-Man. So yes, like a funnel, brings the plastic towards it, the natural ocean currents push it against it, moves towards the center, becomes very concentrated. And once it's concentrated, well, then it's easy to get it out and ship it to land for recycling.