Catching Up with The Ocean Cleanup The Ocean Cleanup

We're in Bangkok, Thailand, where Interceptor 019 has been deployed as our first step in cleaning the Chao Phraya - one of the world's busiest rivers.



Charlotte de Jong, Business Development Manager at The Ocean Cleanup, has spent years preparing for this moment, collaborating with dozens of partners, and facing the challenges of placing an Interceptor in a prime central location in one of the world's great cities.



Catching Up hears how Charlotte has worked together with Thai administrators, volunteers, and businesses to ensure Interceptor 019 has maximum impact and visibility for Bangkok's residents and how our technology and expertise require local expertise and ownership to complete our mission of ridding the oceans of plastic.



Read more about Interceptor 019 in Bangkok here: https://theoceancleanup.com/updates/bangkok-begins-the-ocean-cleanups-interceptor-019-comes-to-thailand/



Find out how we're intercepting plastic in the world's most polluting rivers here: https://theoceancleanup.com/rivers/

How do we clean the oceans? With a little help from our friends, of course - and Ewan Topping, Senior Partnership Manager at The Ocean Cleanup, is the man who helps us find them. Hundreds of organizations collaborate with The Ocean Cleanup, and Ewan tells us the key to attracting the right support: identify a shared problem and find partners motivated to solve it.

But it's not all about big organizations - many of you, our listeners, support The Ocean Cleanup each month. Ewan tells us how this is now easier than ever with our new fundraising platform, ready for anyone around the world to help us rid the oceans of plastic.

Does your organization want to help rid the oceans of plastic? Read on: https://theoceancleanup.com/partners-and-funders/

Want to make an impact? Start fundraising for The Ocean Cleanup here: https://fund.theoceancleanup.com/

The Ocean Cleanup is heading back to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch with System 03, so Catching Up speaks to Senior Offshore Representative Grete Ernst ahead of her latest trip to the Pacific Ocean.

Grete has front-row seats for the largest cleanup in history and shares her excitement at heading out once more. But Grete has many tales to tell from her time offshore, and she reveals what life is really like with the same crew for weeks on end, with land nearly a week’s journey away - as she says, almost like a different planet.

In such a key year for our oceans, Grete tells us how she'll be helping us optimize System 03 following its winter upgrades to make us even more impactful and efficient in cleaning plastic. From the Global Plastics Treaty to the importance of creative thinking in engineering, Grete gives us the full picture of cleaning the ocean - from up close.

It’s not just about plastic - it’s about people, too.

Suleman Audu, Environmental Manager at The Ocean Cleanup, takes us from his schoolboy Environmental Club days back in Nigeria to his vital role in our mission: making sure our river deployments bring the right benefits for the people living alongside them.

Every river is unique - and so is every riverside community, particularly when the river is vital for local needs. Suleman explains how he and his colleagues work to understand plastic pollution from the local’s point of view - and use our deployments to help them to solve it.

Suleman also speaks to the power of empathy, how his experiences help him connect with our stakeholders and listen to what matters to them, and his pride and passion in joining our mission to rid the oceans of plastic.

It’s been a stellar year for The Ocean Cleanup. New deployments, global negotiations, and an incredible global catch total of over 8 million kg (almost 18 million lb!) of trash removed from oceans and rivers worldwide.

So as a special holiday gift, Catching Up is serving a selection of 2023 highlights from our chats with crew members (and special guests) this year - curated and presented by your always-festive host, Dan van der Kooy.

From the entire crew of The Ocean Cleanup, we thank you for listening and coming with us on this mission to rid the oceans of plastic. We wish each of you a very happy new year, and we can’t wait to share 2024 with you - so make sure you’re subscribed.

You can donate to help clean our oceans - join us at theoceancleanup.com/donate

Data is nothing without the brains to understand it correctly - and we have just the brain for the job. From plastic-infested riverbanks in the Caribbean to diplomatic meetings in Kenya, Renata Correia has spent four years crossing the world with The Ocean Cleanup, analyzing and enhancing the data we gather on plastic pollution. Renata takes us through her journey: from her horror at her first sight of the scale of plastic pollution in Guatemala, to her current role as the 'data whisperer' in our Rivers program.

Every river is different, and solid data helps us see where plastic pollution comes from and lets us measure our impact in tackling it. As Head of Performance and Analysis for our Rivers team, Renata tells Catching Up how her constant curiosity keeps her searching for new answers, and how she guides an expert team of scientists around the world to connect the dots and spot the patterns across a planet's worth of plastic data.

Find our more about The Ocean Cleanup's work researching plastic in rivers here: https://theoceancleanup.com/updates/a-tale-of-3-rivers-intercontinental-river-research-collaboration/

and the 1000 rivers around the world that our models predict as the top polluters here: https://theoceancleanup.com/sources/