Between Hawaii and the West Coast of the United States, there's a swirling pool of trash over twice the size of Texas.
It's estimated that this area, dubbed the Pacific Ocean Garbage Patch, contains over 1.8 trillion bits of floating plastic — that works out to roughly 250 pieces of debris for every person on Earth.
However, a 25-year-old entrepreneur, Boyan Slat, is on a mission to clean up the plastic soup.
Image: Slat's organization, The Ocean Cleanup, has developed a tool to remove the trash. Steven Guerrisi/Flickr
