{"id":49384,"date":"2026-07-25T13:51:47","date_gmt":"2026-07-25T20:51:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=49384"},"modified":"2026-07-25T13:51:48","modified_gmt":"2026-07-25T20:51:48","slug":"why-the-ocean-cleanup-hasnt-solved-the-plastic-pollution-crisis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2026\/07\/25\/why-the-ocean-cleanup-hasnt-solved-the-plastic-pollution-crisis\/","title":{"rendered":"Why The Ocean Cleanup Hasn\u2019t Solved the Plastic Pollution Crisis"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Plastic
Plastic debris litters Beverly Beach on the Oregon coast. Photo credit: Tiffany Woods \/ Oregon Sea Grant \/ NOAA (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Environment<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

David Shiffman<\/a>\u00a007\/23\/26 (whowhatwhy.org)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Global problems are rarely solved by one person or invention \u2014 no matter how much they go viral. The Ocean Cleanup didn\u2019t work, for the reasons experts said it wouldn\u2019t. What can we learn from this?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2019 a nonprofit called The Ocean Cleanup conducted a major test of technology designed to remove plastic pollution from the water.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It appeared to work, and the nonprofit released photos proclaiming its success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But some scientists noticed something else among the accumulated plastic in the Ocean Cleanup\u2019s publicity photos.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEarlier this year I warned that @TheOceanCleanup would catch and kill floating marine life,\u201d marine ecologist Rebecca Helm wrote on the social media platform then known as Twitter. \u201cThis week they announced they\u2019re collecting plastic, and their picture shows HUNDREDS of floating animals trapped with the plastic.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Social
Social media post from Open Ocean Exploration.
Photo credit: The Revelator<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The Ocean Cleanup team appeared to be oblivious to this consequence of their test before this public criticism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s not surprising that any attempt to remove plastic from the ocean would catch, and likely kill, many marine organisms, because the waters of this region aren\u2019t a trash-filled biological desert. The area is full of neuston, marine life that lives right at the sea surface \u2014 species that may not be as charismatic as dolphins or sea turtles but are extremely ecologically important.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis region in general has very high densities of several key species,\u201d says Helm, now an affiliate faculty member at Georgetown University. \u201cThis ecosystem is ecologically important to species that we do care about. We can\u2019t just go disrupting it in the name of conservation and imagine that everything is OK and that you\u2019re doing a good thing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Other scientists agreed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHonestly, if that was me, I would have totally stopped,\u201d Kim Martini, a physical oceanographer and founder of the oceanography equipment designer and supplier Tini Scientific, says of the incident. \u201cBecause the whole point is supposed to be about how you\u2019re saving animals that live in the ocean.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But while Ocean Cleanup adapted \u2014 the organization claims its latest designs have a \u201clow adverse impact<\/a>\u201d on ocean wildlife (something its own data contradicts) \u2014 it hasn\u2019t stopped. It continues to conduct plastic-removal operations at great financial cost, garner worldwide publicity and social media attention, and attract millions of dollars of donations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All for an idea that, almost from the day it was announced, scientists have warned could do more harm than good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Meteoric Launch<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

It all began in 2012, when Boyan Slat, an 18-year-old Dutch aerospace engineering student, gave a TED talk announcing a bold scheme to scoop plastic trash out of the ocean. Slat envisioned building what would be the largest human-made structure ever deployed in the ocean (by far), a device that would collect plastic from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and remove it, saving countless marine organisms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This idea has since attracted a loyal social media following and become a nonprofit that generates millions of dollars in donations a year<\/a>, a fundraising and media juggernaut in the ocean conservation space.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What you wouldn\u2019t know from most of the media coverage and social media posts is that experts in ocean plastic pollution and ocean engineering have long been skeptical of Slat\u2019s model<\/a>, raising concerns about a fundamental misunderstanding of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and local ecology<\/a>, a misunderstanding of why plastic pollution is a problem<\/a>, and a lack of experience with the complex marine engineering required to pull off something like this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That criticism and feedback haven\u2019t dissuaded The Ocean Cleanup, despite the fact that to date it hasn\u2019t accomplished what it set out to do, for exactly the reasons that ocean plastic pollution and ocean engineering experts said it wouldn\u2019t work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After building and testing expensive prototypes that led to failed tests \u2014 which failed exactly the way ocean plastic pollution and ocean engineering experts said they would \u2014 the team pivoted in 2019 toward a new model that was first suggested by critics and skeptics as an alternative in 2015<\/a>. Now they mostly intercept plastic when it first leaves rivers and enters the ocean instead of trying to scoop it out of the middle of the ocean, though the open ocean work is still mentioned on their website and generates praise-filled uncritical media coverage<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Experts say The Ocean Cleanup\u2019s history and current reality represent a useful case study in the role of evidence and expertise in solving complex global environmental problems, and why we should be skeptical of \u201cOnly I can fix it<\/a>\u201d public figures and their self-proclaimed revolutionary inventions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Misunderstanding of the Background Issues: Ocean Plastic Pollution and the Great Pacific Garbage Patch<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s no doubt that ocean plastic pollution is a huge problem. Some organisms ingest smaller pieces of plastic, which will either choke them, poison them, or block their digestive tracts<\/a> (essentially filling their stomachs with items they can\u2019t digest so there\u2019s no room for actual food). Larger pieces of plastic pose entanglement hazards, immobilizing and drowning marine life. This plastic has been found all over the world<\/a>, and thanks to patterns of global ocean currents, it aggregates in regions called gyres<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"dead
A dead albatross at the Midway Atoll Refuge. The unaltered stomach contents of a dead albatross chick photographed on Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge in the Pacific in September 2009 include plastic marine debris fed the chick by its parents.
Photo credit: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Headquarters \/ Flickr (
CC BY 2.0)<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

But when most people think about the ocean plastic pollution problem and the famous \u201cGreat Pacific Garbage Patch,\u201d they picture a huge and dense plastic island so thick that you can walk on it. That\u2019s not the case \u2014 it\u2019s more like a soup<\/a> full of tiny bits of plastic, sometimes so small that they\u2019re invisible to the naked eye.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf you go to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, what you see is not a big collection of trash, but ocean, and it looks pretty normal,\u201d says Miriam Goldstein, who did her Ph.D. on this region and is now the executive director of the National Ocean Protection Coalition. \u201cWhen I was doing research out there, we were looking at many, many pieces of plastic \u2014 each about the size of a crumb.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In any situation, if you don\u2019t understand the problem, you\u2019re unlikely to come up with a workable solution<\/a>. For example, if you incorrectly believe that there are giant mountains of dense plastic floating in the ocean, it\u2019s easier to wrongly believe that we can engineer a way to easily just scoop that plastic out of the ocean. It\u2019s much harder to remove lots of tiny crumb-sized pieces of plastic \u2026 at least if your goal is avoiding killing everything else that\u2019s swimming and living nearby.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI was extremely skeptical of the whole idea, in part because the original TED talk was based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the Pacific Garbage Patch and gyres,\u201d says Clark Richards, a physical oceanographer with Fisheries and Oceans Canada. \u201cThat\u2019s the kind of picture that you get from introductory textbooks.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s Hard to Build Things That Can Survive in the Ocean<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

A major reason why experts were skeptical of the Ocean Cleanup from the beginning was the team\u2019s lack of experience with ocean engineering.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For one thing, the ocean is a rough environment, and it destroys human-made structures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou have a lot of concerns for any kind of instrumentation or large hardware that goes into the ocean,\u201d says Martini. \u201cWaves put a really large stress on anything mechanical. And you have issues with biofouling; anything you put in the ocean acts like a little raft and everything likes to grow on it, which makes it heavy and pulls it down.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"3D
The 3D camera array before deployment (top), and at recovery (bottom).
Photo credit: Ocean Networks Canada \/ Flickr (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Richards also stressed the corrosive effect of seawater on anything metal and pointed out the complexity and expense of even getting a large structure in place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEquipment capable of being moored in the open ocean must be deployed from large capable offshore vessels, which typically cost about $100,000 per day,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In other words, there\u2019s a reason why no one had built an object as large as the original vision for the Ocean Cleanup before, and it\u2019s not because no one else had ever thought of it before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen I first saw the idea, I thought \u2018This is very well-intentioned and heartfelt, but it won\u2019t scale, it won\u2019t work,\u2019 \u201d Goldstein says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the time Goldstein and Martini, writing for the ocean blog Deep Sea News, performed a detailed technical review of proposed plans for the Ocean Cleanup<\/a>, using their expertise to point out why the device could not function as claimed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe were trying to do them the courtesy of taking them seriously,\u201d Goldstein said. \u201cAnd also, as ocean communication people, we thought it was our duty to talk about this, since it was getting so much attention.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sure enough, a 2016 test run of a small-scale prototype broke<\/a> for exactly the reasons Martini said it would and failed to collect a significant amount of plastic for exactly the reasons Richards said it would<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And by breaking<\/a>, the Ocean Cleanup system itself became ocean pollution<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A representative for the Ocean Cleanup told me via email that they were receptive to expert criticism they received and made substantive changes to the design based on that criticism. The experts I interviewed for this article disagree.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More Issues<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

After fixing some of the structural issues, subsequent Ocean Cleanup designs began to collect small amounts of plastic trash \u2014 nowhere near the amount they claimed they were going to be removing<\/a> and nowhere near enough to make a substantive difference \u2014 while also apparently killing enormous numbers of marine organisms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Goldstein was not surprised by this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYeah, that\u2019s what happens when you try and catch things in that part of the ocean,\u201d she says. \u201cThis was wholly predictable from a basic knowledge of that ecosystem \u2014 predictable and predicted. Our concern was a lack of fundamental understanding of both the oceanography and the animals that live among the plastic.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A representative for the Ocean Cleanup acknowledged via email that their efforts kill some marine life but asserted that their research, published in the journal Scientific<\/em> Reports<\/em><\/a>, suggests plastic pollution kills more marine life than their cleanup attempts. They further claimed that \u201ca majority of species caught as bycatch are invasive species.\u201d The experts interviewed for this article did not agree with either claim.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The supplementary materials of their Scientific Reports<\/em> paper, meanwhile, catalogued thousands of marine animals<\/a> killed during Ocean Cleanup operations, including threatened species of sharks, bony fish, and sea turtles \u2014 none of whom are invasive. It found that 84 percent of animals identified as \u201cincidental catch\u201d in their cleanup efforts were fish, including three species of sharks. The paper also detailed how \u201cSpecies classified as Vulnerable or Endangered, such as sea turtles (e.g., loggerhead, green and olive ridley), have also been encountered as incidental catch during cleanup.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pivots<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Later designs of the Ocean Cleanup moved on from the free-floating boom and net design and transitioned into what it called System 002 and System 03 \u2014 essentially a large net towed behind a pair of boats. Ocean plastic pollution experts, once again, were not impressed. Despite the expenditure of millions of dollars, this new design was just slightly modified fishing gear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis organization was so focused on \u2018technology development\u2019 that they would adopt whatever they found and claim that they invented it, such as rebranding trawl fishing as trash removal technology,\u201d Richards says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2019 the Ocean Cleanup team also added a new element to their portfolio: trying to stop plastic from entering the ocean by intercepting it at river mouths.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While intercepting trash in this way is a good idea (and one that had been suggested by critics of earlier designs for years<\/a>), the way they went about it left a sour taste in many people\u2019s mouths.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe river interceptor design was clearly based on existing solutions\u201d like Mr. Trash Wheel<\/a>, Richards says. \u201cRather than work with the organizations who had successfully been removing trash from rivers for years, they \u2018reinvented\u2019 a similar design, at a much higher cost, and claimed to be innovators.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A representative for the Ocean Cleanup told me via email that their river interceptors are custom-designed for each river.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Other Solutions<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

So if we can\u2019t scoop all the plastic trash out of the ocean without killing large numbers of marine animals, what can we do instead?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One effective (and cost-effective) solution is the Ocean Conservancy\u2019s International Coastal Cleanup<\/a>. This amazing program has removed more than 400 million pounds of trash from beaches, where it\u2019s much easier to access than in the middle of the ocean, before it gets swept back to sea. They do this at incredibly low cost, because more than 19 million people around the world have volunteered to help.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOur total annual budget for all our plastics advocacy work, which includes cleanup, science and policy efforts, is about $6 million,\u201d says Jordana Lewis, director of communications for the Ocean Conservancy Director of Communications. \u201cEvery organization contributing to the International Coastal Cleanup does things a little differently, but for every $2 invested Ocean Conservancy can remove a pound of trash from the environment and<\/em> invest in scientific research and upstream policy solutions to prevent plastics from being produced and\/or entering our ocean in the first place.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As of this writing, The Ocean Cleanup reports it has removed 117.3 million pounds<\/a> of waste from the ocean and (mostly) rivers. The nonprofit spent more than $72 million across its 2022-2024 fiscal years, according to tax filings<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile Richards points out that in 2024 Ocean Cleanup\u2019s System 002 \u201cwas out there spewing diesel fumes from a ship that cost $100,000 a day, picking up less plastic than a bunch of volunteers on beaches.\u201d (A representative for the Ocean Cleanup told me via email that they are working on improving the cost efficiency of their operations.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ultimately the solution to the ocean plastic pollution crisis is going to be changes to our manufacturing and waste storage and treatment processes<\/a>, which will take international agreements<\/a> and lots of hard work. Or we could use less plastic \u2014 which would solve all these problems at the source.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lessons Learned?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

One of the most important lessons from this is that it shows the public understands the problems that plastic pollution poses to marine life \u2014 and that they\u2019re willing to support solutions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unfortunately, it also shows how some people can take certain ideas too closely to heart \u2014 and take it personally when those ideas are criticized. When experts started speaking out about the Ocean Cleanup several years ago, I witnessed several of them endure online harassment from supporters of the organization, often phrased as \u201cAt least they\u2019re trying to do something to help, all you do is complain.\u201d (Note that this was being said to people who devoted their lives and careers to evidence-based solutions to cleaning up the ocean).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another recurring theme was \u201cYou\u2019re just jealous that someone solved a problem you didn\u2019t.\u201d (Of course, this was being said to people pointing out that the Ocean Cleanup had not<\/em> solved the problem).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ironically the criticism seemed to cause defenders to double-down on Ocean Cleanup.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe were cast as the haters who just didn\u2019t want to believe, and there\u2019s a certain personality that sees criticism itself as validation that the idea is a good one,\u201d Goldstein said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course, sometimes when experts say something doesn\u2019t work, it\u2019s because it doesn\u2019t work \u2014 not because critics are jealous of an idea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Critically, trying to help<\/em> is not the same thing as actually helping<\/em>, and some popular solutions either make problems worse, or fail to solve them while squandering limited resources<\/a>. For example, much \u201cSave the bees\u201d rhetoric focuses on nonnative honeybees and not the native species that are actually endangered; far too many well-intentioned online petitions aim to solve problems that have already been solved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Helm, who worked on the United Nations High Seas treaty as a scientific advisor, knows how complicated effective solutions to complex issues really are. There are no shortcuts to putting in the work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere was this spirit at the time that a few well-meaning young people with a lot of passion would find solutions, but for complex problems like this one, the teenage geniuses and their billionaire backers aren\u2019t going to save us, and they\u2019re going to take us on a wild and expensive ride along the way,\u201d Helm says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Indeed, very few complex global problems will be solved by \u201cimported magic,\u201d<\/a> a silver bullet technological solution that requires no one to make any sacrifices or changes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fixing these problems will require hard work, cooperation, expertise, and evidence. It may not make for snappy social media posts, but in the end, it\u2019s the only thing that will help.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This story by <\/em>David <\/em>Shiffman<\/em><\/a> was originally published by <\/em>The Revelator<\/a> and is part of <\/em>Covering<\/em> Climate Now<\/em><\/a>, a global journalism collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate story. <\/em>WhoWhatWhy has been a partner in Covering Climate Now since its inception in 2019.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Environment David Shiffman\u00a007\/23\/26 (whowhatwhy.org) Global problems are rarely solved by one person or invention \u2014 no matter how much they go viral. The Ocean Cleanup didn\u2019t work, for the reasons experts said it wouldn\u2019t. What can we learn from this? In 2019 a nonprofit called The Ocean Cleanup conducted a… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2039],"tags":[2269],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49384"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49384"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49384\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49385,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49384\/revisions\/49385"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}