AirBnB and Samara Co-founder Joe Gebbia donates $25 million to the ocean cleanup
The Ocean Cleanup – the international non-profit project developing and scaling technologies to rid the world’s oceans of plastic – announced its largest private donation to date, a $25 million gift from Joe Gebbia, Co-founder of Airbnb and Samara and Chairman of Airbnb.org. The Ocean Cleanup will use these funds to continue and expand its operations across oceans, rivers, recycling, and scientific research – and, in particular, to support the launch of System 03, the latest iteration of its ocean cleaning system, in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch later this year. This latest gesture of support from Joe Gebbia will significantly contribute to The Ocean Cleanup’s mission, allowing it to scale faster, remove pollutants more efficiently, and ultimately move closer to its vision of restored oceans around the world. The Ocean Cleanup develops and scales technologies to rid the oceans of plastic. To do this, the organization employs a dual strategy: cleaning up the existing legacy plastic floating in the ocean while also addressing new emissions of plastic flowing into the ocean from rivers, using a portfolio of Interceptor Solutions. The Ocean Cleanup’s pilot-scale ocean cleaning system, System 002, has been deployed in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (located between Hawaii and California, and consisting of up to 100,000,000 kilograms of plastic) since late 2021. It has so far removed close to 200,000 kilograms (or roughly 440,000 pounds) of plastic that otherwise would have remained trapped for decades or more.