How the Hell did I Know Greta Thunberg's Name Before I Knew About Boyan Slat?

A few days ago, I was relaxing after a day of writing business plans and refining pitch decks by watching recommended videos on YouTube when I came across Boyan Slat and his company The Ocean Cleanup. For the next 2 hours I watched interviews and demos of Slat's solutions, and it made me angry—but not at him, and not Greta Thunberg.

I'm living right in the middle of Bangkok, attending the Space-F Accelerator, focused on food tech, where my co-founders and I are working on making the world's most sustainable protein (you can read more about Manna Foods here).

Bangkok is a city unlike any I have been to. There are many qualities that are amazing about this place, but the levels of single use plastics are astounding. A Thai Tea from my favorite company Cha Tra Mue, delivered by Grab (kind of like Uber Eats) costs 40 Thai Baht with a 10 Baht delivery fee, about $1.60USD. That single beverage (probably 12 ounces of Thai Tea) arrives in a plastic cup, with a plastic lid, a plastic straw, wrapped in a Cha Tra Mue single use plastic bag, and wrapped in a Grab single use plastic bag.

To say that my Alaskan co-founders and I have been confronted by the impact of waste on the environment here is an understatement. Thailand is the 6th largest contributor of ocean waste in the world, generating 1.03 million tons of plastic waste a year—and it's very visible, floating down the Chao Phraya River, right next to the ferries filled with tourists.

Of course, I had heard of The Ocean Cleanup before, but I'll give you a summary of what they showed off that prompted my frustrations:

Boyan Slat and his team at The Ocean Cleanup have designed, built, and deployed specialty ships called Interceptors that passively remove the majority of plastic wastes coming down rivers.

Slat and his team already are working on cleaning the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, but wanted to engineer a solution to prevent the plastic from continuing to get to the oceans. They built sensors and installed them on bridges around the world, monitoring plastics flowing in the rivers beneath them. What they discovered is that just 1000 rivers contribute 80% of the world's ocean plastic pollutions.

It's incredible, and already in action in Malaysia and Indonesia. More exciting to me, Thailand is waiting for their first Interceptor—I'm guessing that it will be deployed on the Chao Phraya River based on their data.

The Ocean Cleanup has also successfully pulled in their first "harvest" from the Great Pacific Ocean Patch.

The list of sponsors and supporters of The Ocean Cleanup is extensive, featuring some major players. Boyan Slat is actively solving a problem with ingenuity and gumption—so why did it take me digging through recommended videos to find him?

It's because Slat isn't going to tearfully yell at world leaders, he's going to tell them about what he's actively doing to make a change. Slat won't sell ad space like Greta Thunberg, he's not an impassioned child activist, he isn't relying on theatrics begging people to do anything, he's doing it himself.

Below is data from Google Trends, comparing search traffic for Greta, Boyan, and The Ocean Cleanup. It's not even close.

I want to make something abundantly clear: I'm not saying anything about Greta or her motivations or actions. I'm commenting on what is proliferated through traditional and social media. Even LinkedIn is a hotbed of arguing about Greta's merits as an environmental activist, to the detriment, I believe, of the issue at hand.

The media prefers environmental virtue signaling to sustainability driven entrepreneurship. Why? Because we solve the problems that they want everyone to believe are unsolvable and apocalyptic.

There are many of us working hard on solutions to the climate crisis, and we're getting support from private industry, education institutions, and yes, even governments—but you won't hear much about the armies of us, because what we do is solve issues, not create ones that can be endlessly rehashed on cable news.

That's why Greta Thunberg is on Time's list of 2019's most influential people, Boyan Slat isn't. It's about influence, not impact—and that's frustrating.