Can this massive invention save our oceans? - Behind the News

A massive project is now underway to start cleaning up the Pacific Ocean. A giant tube is being towed out to a giant patch of garbage where around 1.8 trillion pieces of plastic have gathered together. This 600-metre-long tube is a device with a very special mission to catch the ocean’s rubbish, or at least some of it. It’s being towed out to a part of the Pacific Ocean known as the Great Garbage Patch. The water currents here happen to make lots of plastic rubbish drift together, and I mean lots. An area almost the size of Queensland. Until now, it’s been too difficult, too big, and too expensive to do much about it. That was until this guy came along, Boyan Slat. This snake thing was his idea, and it all started when he was still at school. For a school project he designed a system of floating barriers that would be up to 100 kilometres long. They’d sit in the path of ocean currents, in a v-shape, to capture and funnel any floating plastic. Then these giant towers would suck it all up.