Rijswijk / Munich. Since 2013, Boyan Slat has been
working on his dream to rid the Pacific Ocean of the large amounts of
waste plastic floating around. During that time, the 24-year-old Dutch
TU Delft student has become world famous with his initiative The Ocean
Cleanup that tackles the so-called ‘plastic soup’. ‘The largest
cleanup in history’ is what the team calls the operation.
The cleaning system consists of a 600-meter-long tube that
floats on the water. Below it is a tapered, three-meter long ’skirt’.
The floater not only ensures the buoyancy of the system, but at the
same time prevents plastic from flowing over it, while the skirt
prevents the (plastic) waste from escaping underneath. Both the
plastic waste and the system are propelled by the ocean current, but
the wind and waves only drive the system, because the float is just
above the water surface, while the plastic is mainly just below it.
The system therefore moves faster than the plastic, allowing the
plastic to be caught. With this method – according to The Ocean
Cleanup, fifty percent of the ‘Great
Pacific Garbage Patch‘ could be cleaned every five years.
A history with BMW i
September 8, 2018 was the
official launch of ‘System 001’ in San Francisco. A tugboat pulled the
ingenious floating device under the Golden Gate to the open sea
marking the start of the cleanup operation. The system went on its way
to a stopover, some 600 kilometers off the coast. After a trial period
of two weeks, it continues its journey to the Great Pacific Garbage
Patch, some 1,500 kilometers further, to start the Cleanup.
During the event in San Francisco, the team was supplied with a
fully electric BMW i3. In the Netherlands, in September, three BMW i3s
models have also been delivered at the new head office of The Ocean
Cleanup in Rotterdam to provide 100 percent electric mobility for
Boyan Slat and his team for the coming 12 months. The delivery of the
vehicles to the Rotterdam office, builds on a longer cooperation that
started in 2017 when three BMW i3’s were provided to the mobility mix
for the event during which Slat and his team made the grand
announcement to start the operation as soon as 2018.
BMW i and The Ocean Cleanup.
For The Ocean Cleanup it is important that their company cars
suit the philosophy of the organization, and the fully electrical BMW
i3 fits that bill completely.
“At BMW i as an incubator for
innovations we also keep pushing the boundaries of sustainability,
even beyond the car”, says Dr. Robert Irlinger, head of BMW i. “We are
delighted to support The Ocean Cleanup on their mission, because we
share the same mindset.” Awarded as the world’s most sustainable car
manufacturer (1), BMW Group, in turn, sees the need to
address the global challenge of plastic pollution, even though the
company is not at the root of it. At the same time, BMW i continuously
strives to maximize the use of recyclates and re-growing materials in
their products. In the wider context of a circular economy BMW i is
considering the use of recovered plastic from rivers and oceans.
BMW i3 up to 95% recyclable.
In addition to the fact that the entire production chain of the
BMW i3 is supplied with green energy, the car can be recycled up to
95%. This way the BMW i3 has been awarded multiple times as benchmark
within sustainable car concepts.2) Furthermore, the
extensive use of re-growing or recycled materials for e.g. the door
cladding and the seats demonstrate the BMW i commitment for an
advanced circular economy.
(1) DowJones Sustainability Index, several years from 1999 on
(2) World Green Car, Green Car Of The Year, Ökotrend, ADAC
EcoTest, etc.
About BMW i
BMW i as a BMW Group brand is focusing on visionary vehicle
concepts, connected mobility services and a new understanding of
premium which is strongly defined by sustainability. BMW i is
represented in 74 countries with the BMW i3 electric car for urban
areas, the BMW i8 plug-in-hybrid sports car and plug-in hybrid BMW
iPerformance Automobiles.
BMW i opens up new target groups for
the company and serves as an incubator for innovations. Technologies
which have debuted successfully in BMW i cars are carried over to
parent brand BMW model lines.
BMW i is associated with DriveNow
(car sharing), ReachNow (car sharing 2.0), ChargeNow (easy access to
the world’s largest network of charging points), ParkNow
(straightforward location, reservation and payment of parking spaces),
the venture capital company BMW i Ventures (investments in start-up
companies with a focus on e.g. urban mobility), BMW Energy Services
and the Centre of Competence for Urban Mobility (consultancy for cities).