why is this not getting more attention?!?!?!

so great to have young minds working on improving our tomorrow when so many of the old minds have given up on trying, stopped caring, or simply never cared at all. On i side note. i wonder if those currents and debris in the past could have caused the idea of disappearing islands.

It's great that someone is trying to take care of this problem, but is this all really that realistic? Disregarding the fact that this will only catch large, floating bits of plastic, whereas the tiny particles that are dispersed throughout the water column (and that enter the food chain) are mostly left where they are, it still seems difficult to do. A quick, back of the envelope calculation, shows that he'll need at least ~60,000 of these beams to clean up this amount of ocean in 5 years. Perhaps more, seeing as these are passive devices that are not 100% effective/efficient. Certainly possible, but is that really realistic? Is there really not a better engineering solution to this problem? I really hope this doesn't turn out to be some kind of scam like for example Theranos.

"Make the ocean to clean itself"? Really? As the headline no less.

Will this affect the marine life? Or is it so limited in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch that that's not a problem?

They have now discovered an enzyme that breaks down the plastic into it's original material form, and are working to do the research to determine how that may affect the animal or plant life. That is the real solution and you should focus money and efforts to that research instead of simply trying to collect all of this plastic. Besides, this article is not accurate in its timeline. There is no possible way they can clean half of that patch in 3 years or even 20 years, and it will cost around $500M a year to do it.

Everyone should stop saying negative things about this invention, yes it may have flaws but at least it doing something, if you have a better idea take action instead of just putting down others ideas

Interesting coincidence, I just wrote an essay about him for school.

Humans need to stop throwing plastic to the sea, and star recycling, but also the governments from every countrys need to motivate people to recycling, making products from recycled source be more cheap and condemning the sea trash throwing and apliyng heay sanctions to those countrys that do not respect the nature!!

Such an amazing person

I'm writing an essay on why he should be the Time 2020 Person of the Year

Amazing . Young'un deserves to be rich and famous , and really should have his head examined . Maybe learn why he thought of such a great idea and no one else has . Plastic is suspended just below the surface . Validate your 2nd Amendment Rights....... Carry !

I have spread the word to my friends and family. I believe they Will Jump Aboard!!! I appreciate all who have already! Thank you!

Thanks to Boyan for his knowledge and dedication to begin the major project .Perhaps it would help is we had some big names to assist and get others involved !!!

building engineering projects since when he was 2 thats a lie

This is the kind of news that needs to be reported!! I know tons of people that would love to see THIS kind of news instead of royal baby pictures and a celebrity’s scandal.

Thank you for working on this! Every time I hear about the floating garbage patch I wonder why we're not doing anything/more about this!

how does it avoid trapping live animals?

very nice work, Keep up the good pace

https://youtu.be/LIfH0mVMWso And maybe stop dumping in the damn ocean in the first place and Heres why!

Please don't think me vulgar; This young man needs to donate a lot of sperm and populate the future of our planet with as many like minds as he possibly can.

This needs to be made into a movie!

There some amazing people out there. A genius such as that can steer his abilities to many profitable and individualistic paths (which is totally ok) but to also use it for the greater good of others as well as nature itself, is amazing in my book. He put a lot of efforts to that and created very good solutions!

This person should get a Nobel prize for the next 10 years!

We need more of him!

Dang this boy is awesome!

Freaked out to realize that 8% of the mass represents 94% of the total ammount...

I am moved and shattered at the same time. Thank God there are people who are willing to go to such lengths to save our planet! But also - how horrible are the companies who dumb the trash into the ocean! I didnt even imagine the scale of this thing! F*****g hell! Went and made a donation to these guys. The least i can do! :(

Keep it up Human!!

It was featured on CNN before. He's amazing!

I wish I could think of smart things like this.

I've done absolutely nothing to help yet feel somewhat responsible just coz we're from the same tiny nation hihi

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So he invented a net?