With 25 million kilos of plastic removed in 2025 alone, The Ocean Cleanup is scaling up efforts to tackle plastic pollution from rivers to o
From the article:
In a world where the scale of plastic pollution can feel overwhelming, 2025 brought a milestone worth celebrating: The Ocean Cleanup, a Dutch nonprofit dedicated to removing plastic from marine environments, pulled more than 25 million kilograms of waste from global waters last year alone. That’s over 55 million pounds or about 2,000 garbage trucks’ worth of plastic that is no longer drifting through our oceans. The achievement brings their cumulative haul to more than 45 million kilos (99 million pounds) since operations began.
In addition to removing huge amounts of plastic waste from the ocean, Ocean Cleanup is also now focusing on devices to collect plastic trash from rivers.
A recent analysis by Ocean Cleanup found that 80% of ocean plastic comes from just 1,000 (1%) of rivers. Stopping plastic at the source so it never even gets to the ocean is significantly easier and cheaper--especially when there are a relatively small number of rivers to focus on for the biggest impact.
Ocean Cleanup has an ambitious goal to remove 90% of floating ocean plastic by 2040 through a combination of prevention and direct removal.















