Boyan Slat

Boyan Slat is a Dutch inventor and entrepreneur. A former aerospace engineering student, he is the founder and CEO of The Ocean Cleanup, a global nonprofit developing large-scale technologies to rid the oceans of plastic, and one of TIME's 100 Most Influential Climate Leaders in Business for 2024.

At age 18, Slat developed a concept that leverages natural ocean currents to passively capture and concentrate plastic waste, potentially reducing the cleanup time from millennia to just a few years. In February 2013, he left his studies at TU Delft to establish The Ocean Cleanup. After four years of reconnaissance expeditions, testing and many design iterations, the world’s first ocean cleanup system was launched from San Francisco on September 8, 2018, soon after followed by deployment inside the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

As CEO, Slat leads a team of about 80 people but spends most of his time on research and engineering. In addition to removing legacy waste from marine environments, The Ocean Cleanup has developed a solution to prevent new plastic from entering the ocean via rivers. Their ambitious goal: to return our oceans to their original, pristine state before 2040.

In 2015, Slat became the youngest-ever recipient of the United Nations’ highest environmental honor, Champion of the Earth, and was awarded the maritime industry’s Young Entrepreneur Award by HM King Harald of Norway. In 2017, he was named European of the Year by Reader’s Digest and is also a member of the prestigious Thiel Fellowship.