Ballona Creek is the main wash from the Westside of Los Angeles. If you, like Ed, have seen Volcano many, many times, Ballona Creek is where the lava was redirected. It exits to the sea at Marina Del Ray.
As such, it is the conduit for a ton of trash swept away during rainstorms. It is a big contributing entrance to ocean garbage. So the fact that they have been using a boat designed to stop garbage from entering the sea. And this is no pie-in-the-sky idea. To quote:
In this creek, the end of a 130 sq mile urban drainage network in LA County, the boat stopped 143,710lbs of rubbish from entering the ocean in 2025.
That's a lot. And there are others now around the world.
This particular barge is a model for others being deployed around the world. Ocean Cleanup operates in 10 places, with 21 Interceptor systems – in countries including Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Guatemala, Jamaica and the Dominican Republic. It aims to clean up the 30 most-polluted cities by 2030
That is fucking great. And it was designed and created by Dutch entrepreneur Boyan Slat. He founded the company Ocean Cleanup in 2013 at the age of 18. That rocks. Here is just a bit more from the article.
Rivers are key. Research by Ocean Cleanup has shown that just 1,000 of the world’s rivers are responsible for nearly 80% of plastic emissions into the ocean, and 90% of all pollution in the ocean comes from rivers. “We have to turn the faucet off before we can scoop the ocean, or else all we’re doing is taking out legacy trash to replace it with new trash,” Patterson says. “Before you can clean out the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, you really need to turn off the source.”
Work on designing the autonomous boat started in 2017, and this pilot project in LA began in 2022. It cost about $1.3m to design and permit, and another $1.5m to secure the boat and booms in place. Maintenance each year costs $650,000 – and the Interceptor is being provided to LA County free from Ocean Cleanup.
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