Stopping the pollution from happening or cleaning up water in the rivers before it reaches the ocean will have a bigger impact over the long run. But neither of those can remove the plastic that is already in the ocean, which is what this project is for.
Unless their cleanup efforts manage to outpace the poluters we would still need to stop the constant flow of garbage for this project to have any meaning.
Stopping the polluters is a much harder behavioural, but mostly political problem. I am 42, I don't think I will see a solution to that in my lifetime. I applaud anything that makes this problem more visible and tangible (pictures of that patch are not enough), and if Boyan has a shot at getting some plastic out after some iterations, awesome! If not, then this has been an inexpensive awareness campaign, showing that it is indeed a much harder problem then anyone thinks.
