The Ocean Cleanup

24.09.2025

“The Ocean Cleanup actively tackles the man-made plastic waste problem in rivers and oceans. The project was founded by Boyan Slat, a Dutch inventor and entrepreneur who wants to rid the oceans of plastic waste.”

Dear visitors to the coral reef and marine water encyclopedia,

We have decided to add a donation button to our homepage.

Why and for what purpose?

For many years now, there has been talk of the pollution of rivers, seas, oceans, and many beaches, for example in Bali, Indonesia. Politicians are making efforts to reduce plastic waste in order to reduce the amount of plastic waste entering the oceans.

The ban on plastic bags in Europe has certainly contributed to less plastic waste ending up in the oceans, but Europe is not the whole world, and the political measures taken so far are far from sufficient to even begin to get the problem under control.

Environmental organizations such as WWF Germany, Greenpeace, and NABU inform, warn, and draw attention to the problem with environmental activities, while scientific companies such as the Heinrich Böll Foundation and the GEOMAR Helmholtz Center for Ocean Research Kiel illustrate the problem with scientific methods. The result: urgent action is needed!

Approximately 100 million tons of plastic are floating in the Pacific Garbage Patch, the largest accumulation of plastic waste in the world, located in the Pacific Ocean between Hawaii and California.

With the donation button on our website, we want to support the non-profit organization “The Ocean Cleanup”, which has so far removed over 20 million kilograms of waste from oceans and rivers worldwide, including 11 million kilograms (24 million pounds) in 2024 alone!

The story of Ocean Cleanup:

“At the age of 16, Boyan Slat saw more plastic bags than fish while diving in Greece. He thought, ”Why can't we just get rid of this?" This question prompted him to investigate the problem of plastic pollution for a school project. He learned that plastic accumulates in five large ocean gyres, the largest of which is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. In 2012, Boyan Slat gave a TEDx talk on how to rid the world's oceans of plastic using technology. The video went viral, and the resulting momentum allowed him to drop out of school and found The Ocean Cleanup."

Why does this affect us all?

Approximately half of the oxygen produced worldwide comes from the oceans, the oceans feed us, and more animals and plants live in the seas and oceans than on the entire land mass! We humans want to relax on clean beaches on vacation, swim and dive, and tourism in turn feeds the people of the host countries.

If the oceans die, humans die!

We are convinced that every donation, no matter how small, will help to rid our rivers, seas, and oceans of a large part of the plastic. Please donate, thank you very much.

Every euro donated on our site goes 100% to The Ocean Cleanup!

If you would like to learn more about The Ocean Cleanup, please click here:

https://theoceancleanup.com/projects/

Information pages

https://www.wwf.de/themen-projekte/plastik/plastikmuell-im-meer

https://theoceancleanup.com/media-gallery/#the-ocean-cleanup-x-aws-8211-ai-to-accelerate-ocean-plastic-removal

https://www.nabu.de/natur-und-landschaft/meere/muellkippe-meer/muellkippemeer.html

https://www.greenpeace.de/biodiversitaet/meere/meeresschutz/plastik-meer

https://www.boell.de/de/plastik-im-meer

https://www.geomar.de/entdecken/plastikmuell-im-meer

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