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Boyan Slat

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Inventor

The Resume

    (July 27, 1994- )
    Born in Delft, Netherlands
    Founder of The Ocean Cleanup (2013; plastic pollution removal technology)
    2014 Champions of the Earth Award (United Nations Environment Programme)
    2015 Young Entrepreneur Award
    2016 Forbes 30 Under 30 recipient
    Aerospace engineering at Delft University of Technology

Why he might be annoying:

    He could easily have passed as some indie artist or member of an upstart boy band.
    He tends to get seasick… a lot (‘I am not a man of the sea’).
    At 12 years old, he entered a collection of 250 model rockets into a contest — which he launched all at once.
    His Croat father and English / Dutch mother have since separated.
    He does not believe in ‘every little bit helps’ — at least not in the normal sense of things.

Why he might not be annoying:

    Unlike Greta Thunberg, he is active in real environmental issues (and before her, even!).
    A scuba diving excursion in Greece – where he found almost no sea life but countless plastic rubbish – inspired his signature high school project.
    His ‘passive concentration system’ is designed to work with ocean currents, which would require considerably less time, money, and equipment than traditional methods, as well as avoiding disruption of surviving sea life.
    He believes firmly in the value of plastic — just not for disposable uses.
    ‘Whereas other change agents rely on reshuffling the existing building blocks of society, technological innovation creates entirely new ones, expanding our problem-solving toolbox.’

Credit: Cool It All Right?


Featured in the following Annoying Collections:

Year In Review:

    In 2023, Out of 12 Votes: 50.0% Annoying
    In 2022, Out of 1 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2021, Out of 8 Votes: 12.50% Annoying
    In 2020, Out of 5 Votes: 0% Annoying