The main principle behind the cleanup system is to have a difference in speed between the system and the plastic so that it goes faster than the plastic, and you can collect it.
About once a month, a vessel visits each of these clean-up systems, almost like a garbage truck of the ocean, would bring the plastic back to shore where it would then be processed and recycled into new products that we would then sell, at a premium, of course, because we could sell it as being made out of ocean plastic.
The entire brain of the organization is here. The construction drawings and data processing all takes place in Rotterdam.
This plastic doesn't go away by itself, and to just let hundreds of thousands of tons of plastic be out there to be fragmented into these small and dangerous microplastics to me seems like an unacceptable scenario.
When you walk, your brain is working better. More blood flow.
I think humanity can do more than one thing at the same time.
Can we build a system which is able to survive on the ocean for years? That is the key question we are trying to answer here with the North Sea prototype.
Truly, the only way to prove that we can rid the oceans of plastic is to actually go out there and deploy the world's first ocean-cleaning system.
We think the fastest way to clean the ocean is to learn by doing.
What I like best is sitting in a room together with really smart engineers thinking about a problem.
Musk is very inspiring to me.
Planning is extremely important, but at some point you have to go out and do it.
I would never be able to work on a photo-sharing app or 'Internet startup XYZ.'
The winning concept is the slow-down approach, in which we use a parachute anchor to slow down the system as much as possible, allowing the natural winds and waves to push the plastic into the system.
Our main funders... a lot of them are entrepreneurs and technologists themselves as well and familiar with iterative development processes.
We need to close the tap, which means preventing more plastic from reaching the ocean in the first place.
We could truly make our oceans clean again.
I really hate looking back. think it's useless. The only way is forward.
The reason why the Wright brothers were successful wasn't because they had the most resources, but because they understood how invention works. You have to iterate quickly, and you should be prepared to fail. Because things often don't go as planned.
