Marc Benioff Supports Ocean Cleanup
In the 2013 Transpac John Sangmeister’s Long Beach-based ORMA 73 trimaran Tritium Lending Club came up just 2.5 hours short of besting the record after at least six collisions with debris in the ocean. The threat of plastic pollution to basic human and planetary health is the primary reason to clean this up, and it’s often sailors transiting the out-of-sight Pacific Gyre who bring this ugly story home.
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Thankfully some positive news is on the way. The Ocean Cleanup project, founded by young, idealistic Dutch entrepreneur Boyan Slat, got a recent boost with a $22 million donation from the Bay Area entrepreneur Marc Benioff.
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We wrote about Slat’s idea in 2015 when 20 boats returning from the Transpac participated in ‘The Mega Expedition’. Each crew deployed trawls to capture and measure plastic pollution. With that information and growing funding from Benioff and others, the concept of cleaning up the Pacific Gyre is closer to reality.
While it’s best to stop plastic from ever reaching the ocean, there’s no choice now but to clean up the plastic that’s already there. The Ocean Cleanup project has announced that development of the system is well underway and the initial deployment, and cleanup could start within 12 months.