The Ocean Cleanup, a Dutch non-profit, launched an ocean-cleaning system from San Francisco on September 8 for a two-week trial before it travels to the so-called “great Pacific garbage patch,” some 1,200 nautical miles offshore.

The group’s System 001 consists of a 600-meter-long U-shaped floating barrier with a three-meter skirt attached below.

The Ocean Cleanup said the system was designed to act like a “giant Pac-Man”, propelled by wind and waves, “allowing it to passively catch and concentrate plastic debris in front of it”.

The great Pacific garbage patch, between Hawaii and California, contains an estimated 1.8 trillion pieces of plastic, almost half of it discarded fishing nets.

The Ocean Cleanup said that it anticipates that the first plastic will be collected and returned to land within six months of deployment. The organisation plans to recycle the material products and “use the proceeds to help fund the cleanup operations”.

Boyan Slat, founder of the Ocean Cleanup, said: “Today’s launch is an important milestone, but the real celebration will come once the first plastic returns to shore. For 60 years, mankind has been putting plastic into the oceans; from that day onwards, we’re taking it back out again.” Credit: The Ocean Cleanup via Storyful