C
OULD YOU INSTEAD
just collect waste
from the river itself?
In 2017, as global
concern about ocean
plastics was cresting,
two studies were pub-
lished that came to a surprising conclusion: A
small number of rivers—one study identified
10, the other 20—were responsible for the over-
whelming bulk of what rivers put into the ocean.
Most of the rivers on the two lists were in Asia.
The Ganges figured prominently on both.
The image of waste-choked rivers was shock-
ing, but the studies’ conclusions suggested a
silver lining: By cleaning up just a few rivers,
one might stanch the flow of plastic into the
ocean—or at least make a big dent in the prob-
lem. That hope turns out to have been naive. A
more recent and comprehensive survey by some
of the same scientists found that you’d actually
have to clean more than a thousand rivers to
cut the amount flowing from rivers to the sea
by 80 percent.
Nevertheless, in Asia, Africa, and both Amer-
icas, river-cleansing operations are under way,
and they’re doing some good. The grandfather
of the effort is Mr. Trash Wheel, a googly-eyed
trash-eating barge that has been collecting rub-
bish in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor since 2014. But
the most ambitious river cleaner is Boyan Slat,
the 27-year-old founder of the Ocean Cleanup,
a nonprofit in the Netherlands.
Slat came to fame as a teenager, when hePLASTIC RUNS THROUGH IT 101