France has developed a yacht that can clean the ocean of plastic

The original ship is powered by garbage, which today is found in abundance in the ocean.

Franco-Swiss skipper Yvan Bourgnon said he and his team have designed a yacht that will help clean up the ocean waters. The fact is that it can use plastic garbage for movement, which today is found in abundance and almost everywhere.

According to the famous explorer (Bourgnion's most famous voyage is a solo round-the-world trip on a 6-meter catamaran without the use of modern navigational instruments), traveling around the world, he noticed that every year more and more plastic debris appears on the surface of the ocean. And then he had the idea to create a ship that could use this plastic as fuel.

The unique yacht still exists only as a project on paper. This is Manta, a 56m catamaran powered by a combination of high-tech sails and electric motors. Special conveyor belts will collect waste from the surface into special compartments where it will be sorted. The plastic will then heat up, releasing the gas needed to drive a turbine to generate electricity.

Solar panels are also provided on board, which, together with a “plastic” propulsion device, will make the vessel autonomous on the 70%. If 400 of these yachts are built, Bourgnon says they could clean up a third of the plastic waste in the oceans. And the issue of plastic pollution is very acute today - if nothing changes in the near future, then even according to the most conservative estimates, by 2060 there will be three times more waste in the sea than today.

The developers hope to build a working prototype by 2024.