The world's largest ocean cleanup is now underway in the Pacific Ocean Saturday Sep 15,2018

The world's largest ocean cleanup is now underway in the Pacific Ocean, aiming to collect up to 150,000 pounds of trash in its first year and eventually tackle the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.  

Ocean Cleanup, a non profit spearheaded by Dutch inventor Boyan Slat, deployed its ambitious $20million system on Saturday Sep 15,2018 from the San Francisco Bay for several weeks of testing before it's officially set into motion.

The project placed a 2,000-foot unmanned floating boom into the water, designed to curve into the shape of a U as it's pushed by the currents, and like 'Pac-Man' eat up trash and hold it inside its structure.

Within five years the organization hopes the boom - called System 001 - will clean half of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a stunning pile of floating trash between California and Hawaii comprised of an estimated 1.8trillion pieces of scattered detritus and at least 87,000 of plastic