It was the summer of 2011 when then 16-year-old Boyan Slat was diving in Greece, and realized he came across more plastic bags than fish.
Being asked to write a high school science paper, he then used that time to investigate the plastic pollution problem, and why people claimed it was nearly impossible to clean up. This work eventually lead him to the idea of using the natural ocean currents to let the oceans clean themselves.
He first floated the concept in 2012 using a TEDx Talk, which rapidly went viral, being watched millions of times. A crowd funded, crowd sourced team of voluntary scientists and engineers then stepped up to help work out the idea.
The Ocean Cleanup was officially founded in 2013.