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The podcast by project managers for project managers. The Ocean Cleanup organization is tackling the largest clean-up project in history. Henk van Dalen shares his passion for the project as he describes the origin of The Ocean Cleanup organization and outlines this bold project to clean the vast amounts of waste from our oceans.

Table of Contents

01:55 … Understanding the Problem 03:19 … How The Ocean Cleanup Began 05:31 … Henk’s Involvement in the Project 06:48 … Ocean Garbage Patches 08:26 … Facing Setbacks 11:21 … The Highs and Lows of Lessons Learned 14:48 … Lessons from Wilson 16:39 … Not Taking it Personally 20:57 … Plastic Size and Barrier Specifics 25:44 … Quantity of Systems Needed 28:00 … Safety for Other Vessels 30:49 … What Happens to the Collected Plastic? 32:07 … Tackling the Problem at the Source 33:50 … Cleaning up the Rivers 37:00 … Leadership Lessons 40:24 … Biggest Surprise on the Project 42:38 … Learn More about The Ocean Cleanup 44:28 … Closing

HENK VAN DALEN:  ...the

Garbage Patch out there is so big and persistent, that’s not going to away by

itself.  It’s almost looking at your

house, and you say, “I have a dirty house; but if I close the doors, then, you

know, it’s going to be fine.”  You still

need to clean it up, as well.

So for us doing that part is essential, and we believe that

the power and the impact that the Ocean Cleanup can make is really in

technology.  Develop technology.  Be able to move quickly to address the

problem that’s there already.  But also,

you know, it’s us also getting the awareness out there that people start

thinking by themselves what it is.  So if

the Ocean Cleanup looked at, but what are we good at and where can we make an

impact, it’s creating that awareness, backing it up by science and showing how

big this problem is and cleaning up the mess that is already out there.

WENDY GROUNDS:  Welcome

to Manage This, the podcast by project managers for project managers.  We’re glad you’ve joined us for a

conversation about what matters to you in the field of project management.  I’m Wendy Grounds, and here in the studio

with me is Bill Yates.

BILL YATES:  Wendy, we’ve

got an interesting theme that you’ve hit on. 

I love this.  We’ve talked about saving

the rhinos.  We’ve talked about tracking

orbital space debris.  We’ve looked

at community

gardens and food banks; sustainability.  And man, have we got a great conversation

today.

WENDY GROUNDS:  I am very excited about this one.  I have been following this project for a few years now and have been trying to find someone who will talk to us.  And we were very fortunate to find Henk van Dalen.  Henk is the Director Ocean Project of The Ocean Cleanup.  This is a project that is looking to clean up the ocean.

BILL YATES:  That’s

it, five trillion pieces of plastic that we want to remove from the ocean.  That’s a big project.

WENDY GROUNDS:  Yeah,

we’re very excited to hear Henk’s story.

Understanding the

Problem

BILL YATES:  Henk,

thank you so much for joining us today on Manage This, from your remote

location.

HENK VAN DALEN:  Thank

you.  Thank you for having me, guys.

BILL YATES:  One of the

first things I want to do is just help our listeners understand the

problem.  Can you define the problem for

us?

HENK VAN DALEN:  So within The Ocean Cleanup, we’re focusing to clean up the oceans, and that first of all means we need to close up the inflow of the oceans, taking the plastic out of the rivers, preventing it going in.  But there’s also the element of a lot of plastic being out there in the ocean itself, and that’s been accumulating there over decades.  And our focus primarily is now on the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. So that is the area of the ocean located between Hawaii and California, and there is a plastic soup, you could say, floating around which is twice the size of Texas.

So that is an immense amount of plastic, and it’s not going away by itself, it’s persistent, it’s been there for years, and it will stay for decades longer if we don’t do anything about it.  And so we’re talking about, well, 1.8 trillion pieces of plastic, which in accumulated weight we believe is around 80,000 tons.  And of course, if no one cleans this up, this is going to be smashed into smaller pieces by the natural elements.  It will end up in our food chain.  It could end up on our plate.  And it really is just harming the whole environment together.  So within The Ocean Cleanup our mission is to get all that plastic out of the ocean.

How The Ocean Cleanup

Began

WENDY GROUNDS:  Can

you describe how The Ocean Cleanup began, how this project actually started?

HENK VAN DALEN:  The Ocean Cleanup is – call it the child of our founder, Boyan Slat.  He was about 16 years old when he was diving in Greece, a great hobby of him.  And during that diving he saw more plastic than fish, and it really started to bother him, and he thought, you know, what can I do as an individual to address this?  So he did go to university, but quickly he thought, I want to give all my attention to address this problem, and I want to put full focus on that for my future.

So he basically did that, and in 2012 he went online with a TEDx talk, the first one about promoting his feasibility study about how he could clean up the ocean.  And the idea was kind of born that plastic washes up on all these (un)inhabited islands, where no one is, but yet there’s plenty of garbage on the islands, and can we not build something that can act as a natural barrier, basically similar to an island, can capture that plastic.  So with that idea he went public, whether doing TEDx – he gained quite some attention from that.  Then in 2013 he received enough funding to start off the research and development, understand more about the problem, as well, but in parallel start thinking about the actual technology, how to address this.

So, yeah, it’s now 2020, of course, so for a good seven years his team has grown, the whole project has grown by itself.  It started very much at really researching a problem, like what type of plastic is out there, how does it get there, how does it behave, how big is it, and all this research we’ve done, we’ve also publicized via our website.  But with the gaining the understanding of the problem, we could then start working on the technology to address that. 

And that’s what we’ve been doing, call it more or less for the last four to five years, really, you know, doing a lot of R&D, a lot of testing.  And then for making sure that we come up with a solution to do this.  Because in the end Boyan said for himself by 2040 he wants to get all of this plastic out of the ocean.  So that’s our mission.

Henk’s Involvement in

the Project

BILL YATES:  That’s a

phenomenal goal.  That’s such a huge

task.  Henk, how did you get involved in

this?  How did you come to join the

project?

HENK VAN DALEN:  Well, myself, I have a background in meteorology and oceanography, which is great, but it mainly learned for me where to surf good waves because I’m a very fond wave surfer.  So I actually traveled the world quite a bit, doing that surfing, and I remember, I don’t know where it was, I think it was in Costa Rica, I read a slogan somewhere that it said “Don’t destroy what you came to enjoy.”  And so I've always been kind of living that motto, you know.  Of course, being a surfer, dealing with the natural elements, you have a lot of respect for Mother Earth.  But also you notice how other people do not necessarily have that.

So I came back, I did start working in a marine construction environment, mainly focusing on building offshore windmill parks.  But I always thought I wanted to do more directly for the ocean.  And it was then that the Ocean Cleanup, which I was following for a while, actually professionalized quite a bit.  And they were then looking for a project manager.  So that was the unique opportunity for me to combine my passion, being surfing and then caring about the ocean, with the skill set I built up during those years in the industry, and therefore make a difference for the better, for the future.

Ocean Garbage Patches

BILL YATES:  That’s phenomenal, so  I didn’t realize there was that connection as a surfer and having that passion, it’s wonderful the way that worked out.  Henk, can you explain further, there’s a big nasty name for the first garbage patch that you guys are going after. Explain how many there are in the ocean, how many big accumulations of plastic there are, and then why did you guys pick the one that’s between Hawaii and California?

HENK VAN DALEN:  So if you look at the world’s oceans, there’s basically five big gyres, and that’s where kind of ocean current circulates around, but you end up in a kind of calmer area in the center where a lot of debris then accumulates.  So those five gyres are basically in the North Pacific, and that one is the one we call the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.  There’s the South Pacific, the North Atlantic, the South Atlantic, and there’s the Indian Ocean.  So as I mentioned, the plastic accumulates there because after a while it kind of is released by the ocean currents, and then it starts to stack up over there.

So of all these five gyres, we have investigated the most the North Pacific one because it is known that that one is the biggest, the most persistent, and therefore also the most worrying in that respect.  And also for, call it a young startup.  We’ve grown quite a bit, of course. We’re not necessarily a startup at the moment, but for us to really get a focus and tackle the problem hands-on we said for ourselves let’s grab the biggest one first, and that is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Let’s make sure we develop technology to address that, and that should be scalable that we could also deploy this on the other gyres in the world,