The Ocean Cleanups latest invention collects 110.000 pounds of trash from rivers each day!

The Interceptor, which was unveiled in Rotterdam, Netherlands, in October, is a solar-powered trash-collecting barge.

Dubbed the Interceptor, this boat is designed to collect plastic trash as it floats down rivers and into the sea. The vessel is the latest project from The Ocean Cleanup, a Dutch nonprofit organization helmed by eco-engineering wunderkind Boyan Slat, whose goal is no less than a 90-percent reduction of plastic trash in the world’s oceans by 2040, and is possibly the most realistic to date.

“Though our initial efforts have focused on addressing the massive amount of plastic debris that has collected in the five ocean gyres, of which the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is the largest, we also need to attack it at its source—rivers.” said Joost Dubois, Head of Communications at The Ocean Cleanup. The Interceptor, which was unveiled in Rotterdam, Netherlands, in October, is a solar-powered trash-collecting barge. Once the vessel is anchored to the riverbed, it lies in wait for plastic trash to float down river into its collection system, where a series of conveyor belts scoop debris from the water and fill dumpsters, which can be removed for recycling.

Founded in 2013 by Slat, The Ocean Cleanup aims to solve the problem of plastic pollution in the world’s oceans by using a fleet of high-technology floating trash collectors. The then 18-year-old Slat was inspired to dedicate his life to cleaning up the ocean after a scuba-diving expedition on which he saw more plastic trash than wildlife. After quitting his astrophysics degree to focus on ocean cleanup full-time, Slat attracted international attention for a series of proposals to collect and recycle trash from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

Read more: Architectural Digest