This 21-year-old invented a way to clean up the massive Pacific garbage patch

Boyan Slat is not your typical 21-year-old.

At an age when many are trying to figure out what they're going to do next with life, the Dutch innovator is the head of The Ocean Cleanup, a nonprofit that's raised millions of dollars to put into action a plan that Slat devised to help clean the massive Pacific garbage gyre, an area of the ocean where swirling currents cause plastic that's entered the water around the world to converge in a huge sea of plastic within the sea.

This plastic isn't just ugly: animals like sea turtles, seals, and birds eat it and are poisoned by it, and as it breaks down into little particles called microplastics, it ends up in fish and could even enter our own food supply.

Slat tells Tech Insider that he was inspired by a diving trip he took when he was 16.

"I was diving in Greece, and I realized there were more plastic bags than fish, and I wondered why we couldn't clean it up," he says.

After returning to school and watching a presentation on how currents cause litter from all over the world to congregate in these massive patches, he questioned whether those same forces could be used to help collect the floating debris: "I wondered, is it a problem, or could it also be a solution?"

Here's the story of how plans for cleanup came together and the reasons why Slat thinks that the plan could succeed, despite some serious questions from the scientific community.