Name: Joe Rogan Experience #1104 - Boyan Slat
Uploaded: 2018-04-16T21:22:33.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #1104 - Boyan Slat' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2018-04-16. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #1104 - Boyan Slat' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2018-04-16. Transcript available.

Joe Rogan Experience #1104 - Boyan Slat

Three, two, one, yes. Hello, Boyan.
Hi there.
Welcome.
Thank you.
Thanks for doing this. I really appreciate it. And I love what you're doing. I've
seen your
TED Talk. I've seen many and numerous conferences that you've appeared at and
discussions you've
given on this. And for people to jump into this right now, what you've done is
think long and
hard and devise a method to try to clean up some of the plastic that we have
floating
around in the ocean. Famously, the Pacific Garbage Patch, which is an enormous
patch of
garbage that's between California and Hawaii. How did you get involved in this?
You're a
young guy. How old are you?
23 already.
23 already? You sound like, oh my God, I'm so old.
Getting old, yeah.
How old were you when you started this?
I think I started thinking about this when I was 16 and founded this
organization when
I was 18.
That's crazy. All you lazy fucks out there that are 16 years old that aren't
doing shit
with your life. Just think about this kid. That's amazing. I'm so happy there's
people
like you in the world.
Thank you. Yeah.
So you started thinking about it when you were 16. And this is something that
is extremely
disturbing to anybody that's paid attention, especially when you see the birds
that have
died with all these plastic bottle caps inside their bodies. And you know, you
see their carcasses
with these multicolored caps in them. And they thought these things were food.
It was just
one of the many, many, many problems that occur when you have plastic floating
around in just
enormous numbers in the ocean.
Sure. Yeah. I mean, there's really three problems with this plastic. First of
all, obviously the
ecosystem damage. I think there are around about 800 species that actually
could go extinct because
of this plastic pollution. Then there's the economic threat in terms of damage
to fisheries,
damage to tourism and things like that. I think it's around $13 billion a year,
according to the
UN. And then thirdly, there's the health impact or the potential health impact
because these tiny
plastic pieces, they actually also end up in the fish we eat that take
chemicals with it. And yeah,
that ends up on our dinner plate as well.
So what was it that prompted you to dedicate, essentially dedicate your young
life to this?
Sure. Yeah. So I've always been very passionate about technology and just
building things. I think
sort of having an idea in your mind and then seeing that become reality and
being able to touch it and
things like that, I think there's literally no better feeling in the world than
that. So I've
been building my own thing since I was two years old, I think, first starting
with things like tree
houses and zip lines, but then going into sort of computers and explosives and
rockets and things
like that, which was a lot of fun, but it wasn't very useful, I would say. So
it's kind of looking for
something sort of something that real to work on a real problem. And that's
what I then came across
when I was 16 years old, I was scuba diving in Greece, and I came across more
plastic bags than fish.
And I wondered, why can't we just clean this up? And that question sort of kept
circling around in my
head. And yeah, sort of thought about how could we do this? The ocean is pretty
big. And then eventually
came up with this idea to use these natural ocean currents to basically let us
collect the plastic.
And so how do you have many different prototypes that you started with, and you
eventually wound up
with what you have now? And have you started implementing them yet?
Oh, yeah. I mean, so the concept that was presented back in 2012 with my first
TEDx talk,
and if you compare that to where we are right now, it's sort of day and night
of a difference.
So yeah, through testing and through all these prototypings, obviously, there
has been a lot of
development there. But the key idea has stayed the same, that instead of going
after the plastic with
boats and nets, which will take around about 79,000 years to clean up just this
great Pacific garbage
patch. Instead of doing that, we let the plastic come to us. So we use
basically a network, a fleet of very long
long floating barriers, which are oriented in a U shape, and they float around
and they kind of act
like a massive Pac-Man. So yes, like a like a funnel brings the plastic towards
it, the natural ocean
currents push it against it, moves towards the center, becomes very
concentrated. And once it's concentrated,
well, then it's easy to get it out and ship it to land for recycling.
So in the past, so we were founded, yeah, around four years ago. In that time,
on one side, we did the
reconnaissance. So we mapped the patch with 30 boats and an airplane at the
same time to really understand
how much is out there, which turns out to be 1.8 trillion pieces floating in
this great Pacific
garbage patch. And on the other hand, we've done all the testing. So we've done
hundreds of scale model
tests. We've done prototypes back in Europe on the North Sea. And actually,
right now, we're manufacturing
the first real cleanup system, which is scheduled to be launched from San
Francisco to the Great
Pacific garbage patch in around two or three months' time.
So has anything been used? Like, is there a proof of concept? Have you done
like real large-scale
testing where you've shown that you can actually do this?
Well, I mean, we've done a lot of subsystem testing. So the prototypes in the
North Sea,
for example, were sort of these 12-meter sections, and we managed to keep that
in one piece.
So, but then, and also the plastic capturing, that worked very well in the lab.
But yeah, the real proof, of course, has to come from this one real system in
the Great Pacific
garbage patch collecting plastic. And that's what we really hope to achieve
this year.
So this is the big one, right? The Great Pacific garbage patch is the largest?
Yeah.
Between California and Hawaii.
And Hawaii, yeah.
So there are five areas in the world where plastic concentrates. This is by far
the largest one.
There are four others, but they are, they combinedly contain less plastic than
this one in the,
in the North Pacific.
Why? Do we know why that is?
Probably because of Asia. So Asia has a, has quite a big problem in terms of
that they use a lot of
plastic, but they don't have a good infrastructure. So by far the largest
source of plastic flowing into
the ocean is also this, this one continent. And what's being released there
naturally by,
because of the currents ends up in this North Pacific patch.
It's such a strange problem because it wasn't something that was discussed in
the eighties or
the nineties, it was nothing. And then all of a sudden, somewhere in the year
2000, I remember
hearing about the massive amount of plastic we have in the ocean. And it just,
it just made sense.
I was like, oh, well, of course, of course it's going to wind up there. But the
sheer size of
it is staggering.
Yeah. And I think that to me, the worrying thing is that it's a, it's a
persistent problem. So
with many other kinds of pollutions, when you sort of turn off the tap, it's,
it will be solved by
itself. Think about, for example, the, the ozone hole with the CFCs. But with
this, like, if you turn
off the tap, the problem is still there. And in a hundred years, it will still
be there. So, so I think
to, to really solve it, you need to do two things. On one side, we have to
close the tap. On the other
hand, we also need to clean it up.
Jimmy just pulled up a, a, a size comparison where it shows 1.6 million square
kilometers,
an area twice the size of Texas or three times the size of France.
Yeah. So this was a study we, we published a few, a few weeks ago. So this was
the result
of that reconnaissance effort. Um, that was kind of funny, like every other
news outlet used a
different size comparison. So I think it was CNN that says it was the size of
Mongolia.
Um, um, we always use Texas. Yeah. Texas is America. Yeah. We use Texas for
everything.
More times California as well. Um, yeah. So, uh, yeah, it's pretty, pretty big
area.
It's insane. And, and it's getting bigger, I'm sure. Uh, yeah. So the, I mean,
the, the area
doesn't really change. It's more the, the concentration, the concentration.
When did we realize that this was an issue like collectively scientists, geologists?
Yeah. Um, so there hasn't been, there have been sort of small sampling efforts
since the seventies.
So back then it was the first time plastic was described as being something
that floats in the
ocean. Uh, but it really only entered the public consciousness. I think in the
late nineties,
there was this, uh, this captain Charles Moore, uh, who, um, was sort of
sailing through it.
And he, he saw this plastic and he was like, well, um, we need to describe this.
And then he did a
scientific paper on it. And, um, yeah. And actually I think he was the one that
termed the,
the term great Pacific garbage patch.
Yeah. So he was riding his boat through it for a long period of time, I guess.
Yeah. I think it was, um, he was participating in some sailing race and, um, he
went through it
and then, yeah, he just saw that stuff. So he was the sort of the canary in the
coal mine.
Um, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. So what, what, is it one of those things where it's
hard to
get different governments to act on this because you know, like who's
responsible for the ocean?
Yeah. I think it's a, it's sort of this tragic tragedy of the commons, right?
Where it's
international water. It's sort of everyone's problem, but at the same time,
legally it's no
one's problem. Um, so, um, yeah. And besides that, uh, what, what I really felt
when I started
the ocean cleanup was that basically everyone wanted this problem to be solved,
but at the same time,
we didn't really have a way to do it. There simply wasn't any technology to do
that. And, um,
that's why I thought, well, perhaps this is an opportunity to combine my
interests of
a solving this problem, but be also developing technology, which is that what
we did.
Is there anyone else doing this?
Uh, so there are many organizations working on the, on the prevention side,
right? So educating
people, thinking about, um, you know, policies, those kinds of things, uh,
which is very important,
I think. Uh, but, uh, yeah, unfortunately we're the only ones that sort of do
the, the hard technology
side of it. And yeah, I, I wish, you know, more people would do it. Um, you
know, if, if somebody
else would clean the ocean, that'd be fine with us as well. Uh, but, uh, until
somebody else does it,
yeah, we're kind of the ones that have to do it.
That's so fascinating to me that out of the 7 billion people in the planet,
sometimes it really
does just take one person to, to act one person, do something about something
that I mean, I'm aware
of many people aware of many people listening, have heard about this. And, uh,
and it's sort of one
of those things that's in the back of your mind that doesn't affect you on a
daily basis. So you
say, well, that's a tragedy. That's a terrible thing, but it's not my problem.
I have my own problems,
but you, this one person decided to do something about it. And the fact that
you did when you were
16 is so fascinating to me. And someone has to do it, right? Right. But isn't
that weird?
Someone has to, but nobody was doing shit until you came along. That's very
interesting. Um,
yeah. Yeah. I sometimes wonder, yeah. Sometimes people ask me like, why, why do
you do it? And like,
my answer would be like, why not? Like, why isn't everyone doing this? My, one
thing that I was
thinking was, and this is my same feeling about pollution, uh, air pollution is
that once they
figured out a way to use whatever's in the particulates in air pollution as a
resource and
make it valuable, then people are going to be running to extract it out of the
skies. And I felt the same
way about the Pacific garbage patch and all the other ocean currents where they
have this, this issue.