阅读理解
"It
can't be done."
Boyan Slat heard this over and over when he first proposed a way to clean up
millions of tons of plastic polluting our oceans. Almost anyone else would have given up
in frustration and despair. But 20-year-old Slat hasn't: been discouraged but committed to his
dream.
"Human history is basically a list of things that couldn't be done, and then were done," he says. Today, slat and his team at The Ocean Cleanup
are well on their way to proving the critics wrong. Good news for the planet.
⑴_______.
Slat, who grew up in the city of Delft in
the Netherlands, was on a diving trip in Greece three years ago when he was
deeply impressed by plastic, "There were more plastic bags
than fish,"
he says.
"That moment I realized it was a huge issue and that environmental issues
are really the biggest problems my generation will face."
That fall, Slat, then 17, decided to study plastic pollution as
part of a high school project. Soon, Slat learned that no one had yet come
up with practical way to clean up this massive garbage patches. Most proposed solutions involved
"fishing" up the plastic using ships equipped with nets﹣which, as Slat discovered, would likely take more than 1,000 years, cost too much, let off too much sea life along with
the trash.
Slat
proposed an alternative that mostly avoided these problems﹣a solar﹣powered system using a floating plastic
tube which will go around the garbage and trap it is 600 meters long, A big screen hangs down from it, about three metres into the water. Wind, waves and ocean currents will push the
trash toward the tube. （Fish can swim under the screen） A ship will pick up the trash and take
it back to the shore to sort and recycle it into oil and other products. Best of all, Slat predicted his system could clean
up the North Pacific Garbage Patch between California and Hawaii where a lot of
floating garbage exists, within five to 10 years.
⑵________.
The
following,
Slat entered the aerospace engineering program at the Delft University of
Technology and officially announced his ocean cleanup concept at TEDx Delft. But nothing much moved forward,
Slat
found himself continually absent﹣minded in classes, looking for ways to improve his
concept.
"It wouldn't let go. I finally decided to put both
university and my social life on hold to focus all my time on developing this
idea.
I wasn't sure if it would succeed, but considering the scale of problem I
thought it was important to at least try." He says.
With
this family's blessing, Slat began in earnest organizing a
team of volunteers and employees for The Ocean Cleanup, which now numbers about 100.
⑶_______.
In
answer to opposition, Slat and his team raised ＄100,000 from a crowd funding campaign and
began testing a 40﹣meter
collecting barrier near the Azores Islands last March. In June, they released a 500+ page possibility
study.
Over the next three
to four years,
Slat will push toward a fully operational large﹣scale project by testing a series of
longer and longer barriers. He's currently seeking to crowd fund ＄2 million to finance it. Incidentally, The Ocean Cleanup is also working on a
plan to stop plastic from washing into the oceans in the first place. "It's just the other problem that
is equally important." Slat says. "It's something everyone is able
to help with,
and we also have some technologies in the pipeline."
As
for school,
Slat doesn't miss it﹣except
maybe for the social﹣part, which he hopes to （恢复） a bit once his team takes on more of
the workload.
"I don't have time for things like that right now, but I really can't complain. I can imagine doing something more fun
than being able to have an idea and then actually making it into a reality." he says.
