- More than 320 million metric tons of plastic are produced every year, with much of it accumulating in oceans.
- At age 16, Dutch innovator Boyan Slat set out to tackle the problem.
- Slat proposed an idea for a massive cleanup device that would collect plastic from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a trash-filled vortex that's more than twice the size of Texas.
- The cleanup tool was recently deployed in the Pacific Ocean, but began spilling the plastic it had collected.
- Slat said he's confident that the device will be successful, but some critics remain skeptical.
The road to success hasn't been easy for 24-year-old Boyan Slat, the founder of The Ocean Cleanup, a startup determined to rid the oceans of massive amounts of harmful plastic.
Slat, a Dutch innovator, came up with his concept for removing garbage from the ocean at age 16, and he's been refining the idea ever since.
His system is designed to collect plastic using the ocean's current. The technology remains largely unproven, even after initial tests showed promise.
The endeavor has been heavily scrutinized by the scientific community, with some scientists worrying that the cleanup tool could harm marine wildlife or be broken up by harsh ocean conditions.
But if all goes according to plan, the device could remove half the plastic in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch - a trash-filled vortex in the Pacific Ocean that is more than twice as large as Texas - within five years.
Take a look at Slat's journey.