Boyan Slat

We’ve been checking in every so often with Boyan Slat. He’s the CEO of the Ocean Cleanup. That’s an environmental organization he founded to develop technology to clean up plastic in the ocean.

CEO（Chief Executive Officer）首席执行官

Found v.建立

Now we spoke with Mr.Slat back in September, just after his team launched a floating device designed to clean up that Great Pacific garbage patch.

Pacific n.太平洋

Patch n.块，片；补丁

You’ll remember that’s a small island of trash between California and Hawaii. This is what he told us then.

Now the real test starts. And we’re now, you know, in the next days few and weeks will really decide whether we can prove the technology because that’s really what’s required to scale up and rid the oceans of plastic.

Scale n.规模；等级 v.攀登；称重

So halfway between Hawaii in California is this area that’s about twice the size of Texas, contains 1.8 trillion pieces of plastic.And we hope to clean it up, removing about half of this patch every five years.

Trillion 万亿

Pieces of / a piece of  

The device is a 2000-feet-long floating barrier that’s in a U-shape.And underneath there is a 10-feet-deep screen that’s designed to capture the plastic that’s not exactly at the surface.

Barrier n. 障碍，隔阂

Underneath prep. 在…下面

Capture v.捕获；捕捉

The plastic gets drawn towards the center like a funnel. And that way we first concentrate the plastic before we take it out.

Concentrate v. 浓缩；专心

Funnel n. 漏斗

文章选自NPR

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