Video: Ocean Cleanup removes 200,000th kilogram of plastic from the Pacific Ocean

The Dutch offshore restoration project, Ocean Cleanup, says it has reached a milestone. The organization's plastic catching efforts have now fished more than 200,000 kilograms of plastic out of the Pacific Ocean, Ocean Cleanup said on Twitter.

BREAKING: 200,000 kg of plastic extracted from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

System 002/B has made its first extraction of 2023 - 6260 kg of plastic out of the GPGP, bringing us to an exciting milestone - together, we have cleaned up over 200,000 kg of plastic from the GPGP. pic.twitter.com/wkc0IAW3dl — The Ocean Cleanup (@TheOceanCleanup) April 4, 2023

The organization's System 002/B pulled 6,260 kilograms of plastic from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in its first extraction of the year. With that, the Ocean Cleanup team said it reached the "exciting milestone" of 200,000 kilograms pulled from the Pacific Ocean.

The plastic catcher has large sweeping booms hundreds of meters long between California and Hawaii, which collect the waste the arms encounter. There are an estimated 1,800 billion pieces of garbage floating in the Pacific Ocean, weighing a combined 80 million kilograms.

The plastic soup known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is about three times the size of France.

Ocean Cleanup is a project launched by Dutch inventor Boyan Slat. Now 28 years old, he came up with his plan to clean up the oceans and seas while he was a high school student.