Boyan Slat spends a lot of time thinking about the ocean. The Dutch inventor has designed the world's first ocean plastic cleanup system. After five and a half years of hard work, the 23-year-old Slat will watch from dry land as System 001 - a floating barrier nearly 2,000ft long - snakes its way out under the Golden Gate Bridge into the Pacific. Its destination is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a gyre of plastic waste twice the size of Texas held in position by ocean currents between California and Hawaii. If all goes to plan ... an array of 60 systems could reduce the amount of plastic there by half by 2025. "I hope that this will be a turning point for the plastic pollution problem," Slat [said]. "For sixty years it has only gotten worse and worse. Now hopefully we're turning the tide." The eradication of the garbage patch, and more broadly the salvation of our oceans, has been Slat's single-minded goal ever since he was 16 years old, when a diving trip to Greece yielded more plastic bag sightings than fish. Struck by the idea for a floating barrier that could collect plastic using the power of ocean currents alone, he founded his company, The Ocean Cleanup, aged just 18. Because the system is solid rather than a net, Slat says sea life will be protected from becoming ensnared. The hope is that plastic will accumulate as if on a seashore, ready to be collected by boats and taken for recycling.