Wired Features Salesforce Co-CEO Marc Benioff and Ocean Cleanup CEO Boyan Slat as They Take Aim at Ocean Trash

Wired is out with its 25th anniversary issue, which features a series of thought leadership pieces featuring innovators, including Bill and Melinda Gates, Jeff Bezos, Peter Thiel, and Sean Parker, as well as a profile of Salesforce Chairman and Co-CEO Marc Benioff and The Ocean Cleanup CEO Boyan Slat. The profile, titled Marc Benioff Bets on Cleanup Tech for Ocean Trash, focuses on Slat’s invention that uses ocean currents to push trash into a “passive collector,” similar to a huge lint trap that can snare debris from the water. The Marc and Lynne Benioff Foundation supports this ocean cleanup effort and the Benioff Ocean Initiative at the University of California, Santa Barbara, which focuses on finding solutions that will result in healthier and cleaner oceans.

Slat’s passive collector launched out of the San Francisco Bay last week. It’s a 2,000-foot long, U-shaped floating tube suspending a stiff, 3-meter-deep screen that will be deployed at “The Great Pacific Garbage Patch,” a pair of swirling trash fields located between the US and Japan. If it works, then approximately every seven weeks, the trash it traps will be taken out by boat and recycled.

Read the full Wired story here, and view a slideshow featuring the launch of Slat’s invention here.