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One deploys 63,000 people. The other deploys engineered systems. Same ocean. Different theory of change.
Disclosure: This comparison is published by Plastic Bank. Our methodology and full source list are at the bottom of the page.
Plastic Bank and The Ocean Cleanup were both founded in 2013. Over the following decade, they built two of the most recognized organizations in ocean plastic. They share a goal. They share a timeline. They share almost nothing else about how they operate.
Plastic Bank puts plastic collection in the hands of 63,000 people across five countries, paying them for the work and wrapping it in a financial inclusion platform. The Ocean Cleanup puts it in the hands of engineered systems: floating barriers in the Pacific, solar-powered Interceptors in polluted rivers, AI-driven drone surveys to map where waste flows. One model scales through people. The other scales through technology. The question is not which scales better, but what each kind of scale actually produces.
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63,000 people in five countries collect discarded plastic for Plastic Bank. The Philippines, Indonesia, Brazil, Egypt, and Thailand.[1] Each collector brings material to a local branch, gets paid in cash and digital tokens, and accesses a benefits platform through the Plastic Bank App. The plastic enters a verified supply chain. Brands purchase Plastic Credits to offset their plastic footprint. Current partners include SC Johnson, Coca-Cola Philippines, and Acer. As of April 2026: over 190 million kilograms collected, roughly 9.6 billion bottles.[2]
A nonprofit engineering organization headquartered in Rotterdam, Netherlands. Founded by Boyan Slat, who proposed the concept in a TED talk at 18.[3] The Ocean Cleanup operates System 03, a large floating barrier towed through the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (GPGP), and deploys solar-powered Interceptor devices in polluted rivers. In 2025, the organization launched the 30 Cities Program, targeting 30 coastal cities across Asia and the Americas with the aim of stopping one third of all river-borne plastic by the end of the decade.[4] As of early 2026, The Ocean Cleanup has removed approximately 50 million kilograms of trash from oceans and rivers, with $121 million secured from The Audacious Project to fund the next phase.[5]
| Plastic Bank | The Ocean Cleanup | |
| Founded | 2013 | 2013 |
| Headquarters | Vancouver, Canada | Rotterdam, Netherlands |
| Legal structure | For-profit social enterprise | Nonprofit (Stichting) |
| Primary approach | 63,000+ people collecting discarded plastic before it reaches waterways | Engineered systems extracting plastic from rivers and open ocean |
| Countries | Philippines, Indonesia, Brazil, Egypt, Thailand | Great Pacific Garbage Patch + 8 cities across Asia and the Americas |
| Revenue model | Plastic Credits, brand partnerships, memberships | Donations, corporate partnerships, product sales (recycled ocean plastic) |
| Community model | 63,000+ collectors earning income, benefits, and interest-free loans | Local operators for Interceptors, sorting facility staff, coastal sweep volunteers |
| Technology | Blockchain-secured app, digital wallets, IBM LinuxONE | System 03 (ocean), Interceptor devices (river), AI-powered Smart River Survey |
| Key metric | 190M+ kg collected (~9.6B bottles equivalent) | ~50M kg removed from oceans and rivers |
Where Boyan Slat saw an engineering problem, David Katz saw an economics problem. Slat looked at the Pacific and asked: how do you build something that can collect this? Katz looked at coastal communities surrounded by uncollected plastic and asked: why is nobody picking this up?
The answer to Katz’s question turned out to be straightforward: because there was no economic reason to. Plastic had value as a raw material, but the people living next to it had no way to capture that value. So Katz built a system that let them.[6] Slat’s answer was equally direct: the scale of the problem in the open ocean was too large for manual collection. You needed machines.[3]
Both diagnoses are correct. They just lead to very different kinds of organizations.
Plastic Bank’s collection model depends on individual judgment at every step. A collector decides where to look, what to pick up, and how to sort it. Sorting matters: rigid plastics like PET and PP are worth more than flexible film, so collectors who sort well earn more.[7] At the branch, an operator inspects and weighs the material. Payment is immediate (cash plus digital token bonuses through the app). The material moves through a verified supply chain to a processing partner and then to a brand that purchases Plastic Credits.[8]
Every step involves a person making a decision. The system’s intelligence is distributed across 63,000 collectors, each adapting to their local environment. That is both the model’s strength (it works in any geography where the branches exist) and its constraint (it scales by adding people, not by deploying machines).
The Ocean Cleanup’s model minimizes the need for human judgment in the collection step. In rivers, Interceptor devices use floating barriers to guide trash onto a conveyor belt and into collection bins. The systems are solar-powered and automated. When bins are nearly full, local operators receive an automated notification.[3] In the open ocean, System 03 is a massive floating barrier towed by two ships through the GPGP, funneling debris into a retention zone for extraction.[9]
Before any device is deployed, the 30 Cities Program runs an intensive analysis phase: aerial drones, AI-powered image analysis, and GPS-tagged dummy plastics are used to chart waterways and track how waste moves from streets to sea.[4] The intelligence is in the engineering and the data, not in the people on the ground. Local operators manage the devices, but the system is designed so that the hard decisions (where to deploy, how to optimize) are made by software and engineering teams in Rotterdam.
The distinction is not better or worse. It is centralized engineering intelligence versus distributed human intelligence. Each has advantages the other cannot replicate.
Both organizations were founded in 2013. Thirteen years later, the numbers look like this:
Plastic Bank: 190 million kilograms collected across five countries through 63,000+ collectors. All of this was gathered on land, before it entered a waterway.[2]
The Ocean Cleanup: approximately 50 million kilograms removed from oceans and rivers. In 2025 alone, the organization collected over 25 million kilograms, its largest annual result. The 30 Cities Program is now deploying in eight cities (Mumbai, Jakarta, Montego Bay, Kuala Lumpur, Panama City, Manila, Bangkok, and Los Angeles) with the rest planned before 2030.[5][10]
Plastic Bank’s number is about four times larger. The two figures measure different interventions. Plastic Bank counts kilograms collected on land, in communities, before that plastic entered a waterway. That is 190 million kilograms that will never reach the ocean. The Ocean Cleanup counts kilograms pulled from rivers and the open ocean where they were already causing damage. One measures interception. The other measures extraction. Both numbers represent real environmental impact, at different stages of the pollution lifecycle.
When The Ocean Cleanup launched, the pitch was open-ocean cleanup. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch. A massive floating barrier. The ambition was to remove 90% of floating ocean plastic by 2040.[3] That goal still stands. But the organization’s own research changed where it puts its resources.
The Ocean Cleanup published data showing that roughly 1,000 rivers carry 80% of river-borne plastic to the ocean.[11] That finding shifted the strategy. If you can stop plastic in the rivers, you reduce the amount that reaches the ocean in the first place. The Interceptor program followed. Then the 30 Cities Program. Then the twin-track framing: “shutting off the tap while clearing the legacy pollution.”[4]
The latest update (April 2026) makes the shift explicit. The Ocean Cleanup states that it needs “both interception of inflow and cleanup of legacy pollution” to succeed.[12] GPGP extraction operations are currently on hiatus while the team develops hotspot-mapping technology to make future extractions more efficient.[12] Meanwhile, the 30 Cities Program is “moving full speed ahead.”
This is a significant convergence. The Ocean Cleanup started as a removal organization and has increasingly become an interception organization. Plastic Bank has always been an interception organization. A decade in, the two models are closer to each other’s territory than either expected to be.
Plastic Bank has a network of 63,000 collectors. The Ocean Cleanup employs approximately 150 people. That is not a criticism of The Ocean Cleanup. It is a description of two models that are designed to work in opposite ways.
Plastic Bank’s model requires people at scale because the work is collection, and collection in informal economies depends on thousands of individuals making daily decisions about where to look and what to bring in. Each of those 63,000 collectors earns income, accesses a benefits platform (health insurance, grocery support, school supplies, interest-free loans), and uses the PlasticBank app as a financial tool.[13] The social impact is structural: it creates an occupation where one did not exist, in communities where formal employment options are limited.[6]
The Ocean Cleanup’s model requires machines at scale because the work is extraction from water, and water-based extraction cannot rely on manual labor. The 30 Cities Program hires local operators to manage Interceptor devices and sorting facilities, and works with municipal governments on waste infrastructure.[4] In Malaysia, a sorting facility on the Klang river employs local staff. In Manila, the first Philippine Interceptor deployment (Meycauayan River, planned for June 2026) is being built in partnership with the city government.[5][10]
The question is what kind of social value you think plastic collection should produce. Plastic Bank says: livelihoods for tens of thousands of people, each integrated into a financial system. The Ocean Cleanup says: engineered infrastructure that municipalities can build around. Both create value. The value is different in kind, not just in scale.
Plastic Bank’s technology augments human work. The blockchain platform (IBM LinuxONE) records every transaction from collector to processing partner to brand, creating a traceable chain of custody.[14] But the technology does not collect the plastic. People do. The app is a verification, payment, and benefits delivery tool that makes the collectors’ work more valuable. Without the collectors, the app has nothing to verify.
The Ocean Cleanup’s technology replaces human work, or at least reduces the need for it. The Interceptor barrier captures floating trash using river currents and a conveyor belt. No one stands in the river. The AI-powered Smart River Survey uses drones, remote-sensing cameras, and GPS trackers to map plastic flows and determine where devices should go.[4] System 03 operates in the open Pacific where manual collection would be impossible at any scale. The technology is the collection method, not the support system around it.[9]
For brands, the difference matters. Plastic Bank’s blockchain proves the material made it from a community into a product (useful for Plastic Credit verification, ESG reporting, EPR compliance).[2] The Ocean Cleanup’s data proves that material was removed from a river or ocean (useful for environmental claims and impact reporting, but without a supply-chain integration endpoint comparable to Plastic Credits).
For businesses: Purchase Plastic Credits to reduce your plastic footprint with blockchain-verified collection data. Over 500 companies partner with Plastic Bank. EPR compliance support available.[2]
For individuals: Monthly memberships fund collection by communities in operating countries. Members receive impact updates.
For businesses: Corporate partnerships fund technology development and deployment. Partners include Coca-Cola, Maersk, Kia. The organization also sells products made from recovered GPGP plastic (sunglasses launched in 2020).[15]
For individuals: Donations fund operations. The 30 Cities Program offers partnership opportunities for municipal governments.[5]
The most interesting thing about these two organizations is that they have been moving toward each other for years.
The Ocean Cleanup started as an open-ocean extraction project. Over a decade, its own data pushed it toward river interception, then toward citywide waste management partnerships, then toward coastal cleanup and ecosystem restoration. The 30 Cities Program looks more like community-scale infrastructure than a cleanup mission. Plastic Bank started as a community collection model. Over the same period, it built a supply-chain technology platform, a Plastic Credits system, and an EPR compliance offering that makes it look more like a fintech company than a recycling one.
Where they converge is on a shared conclusion: you need infrastructure on the ground, in the communities and cities where plastic enters waterways, if you want to stop the flow. They just disagree about whether that infrastructure should be built around 63,000 people sorting plastic by hand, or around solar-powered machines doing it automatically.
If you are deciding where to put your support, the question is: do you want to fund a human network that creates livelihoods while collecting plastic, or an engineering system that collects plastic while creating local jobs as a byproduct? The ocean needs the answer to be yes to both.
All sources accessed and verified as of April 2026.
[1] Plastic Bank, About Us – Founding story, social fintech, collector benefits, digital wallet model. https://plasticbank.com/about/
[2] Plastic Bank, Global Impact – 63,000+ collectors, 5 countries, 190M+ kg collected, Plastic Credits, partners (SC Johnson, Coca-Cola Philippines, Acer). https://plasticbank.com/global-impact/
[3] Wikipedia, The Ocean Cleanup – Founding by Boyan Slat, system iterations, ~150 staff, Interceptor technology, scientific publications, criticisms (Goldstein, neustons), $121M Audacious Project. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ocean_Cleanup
[4] The Ocean Cleanup, 30 Cities Program launch (June 2025) – 30 cities, 1/3 of river pollution target, transition from single rivers to citywide, drones/AI/GPS analysis, twin-track approach. https://theoceancleanup.com/updates/the-ocean-cleanup-launches-30-cities-program-to-cut-ocean-plastic-pollution-from-rivers-by-one-third-by-2030/
[5] The Ocean Cleanup, 30 Cities Program funding (March 2026) – $121M from Audacious Project, ~50M kg total, 8 initial cities (Mumbai, Jakarta, Montego Bay, KL, Panama City, Manila, Bangkok, LA), 2-5% of global river emissions intercepted. https://theoceancleanup.com/updates/funding-unlocked-for-the-30-cities-program/
[6] The Manila Times, How Plastic Bank uplifts waste collectors – Interview with David Katz, collector dignity, poverty-pollution link. https://www.manilatimes.net/2025/05/25/business/sunday-business-it/how-plastic-bank-uplifts-the-lives-of-waste-collectors-protects-the-environment/2120398
[7] Soapbox Project, How Plastic Bank is reducing ocean plastics – Collector sorting by type (PET, PP, flexible), two-stage payment, value maximization. https://www.soapboxproject.org/journal/how-plastic-bank-is-reducing-ocean-plastic-pollution
[8] Plastic Bank, FAQ – Collection process, Community Partnership Program, EPR compliance, PRO role. https://plasticbank.com/faq/
[9] The Ocean Cleanup, Milestones – System 03 scale (football field every 5 seconds), 20+ Interceptor deployments, 9 countries, 100+ scientific publications. https://theoceancleanup.com/milestones/
[10] The Ocean Cleanup, Manila Bay deployment (March 2026) – Philippines as part of 30 Cities, Meycauayan River Interceptor, 90% of Manila Bay waste is hard/film plastics. https://theoceancleanup.com/press/press-releases/the-ocean-cleanup-to-deploy-interceptors-in-manila/
[11] Sustainability Magazine, 30 Cities Program – 1,000 rivers carry 80% of river-borne plastic, 29M kg removed by mid-2025, Kingston Jamaica citywide learning. https://sustainabilitymag.com/news/how-the-ocean-cleanup-is-removing-plastic-waste-in-thirty-cities
[12] The Ocean Cleanup, Taking the next step in ocean operations (April 2026) – GPGP extraction on hiatus, hotspot mapping tech in development, explicit statement: need both interception and legacy cleanup. https://theoceancleanup.com/updates/taking-the-next-step-in-our-ocean-operations/
[13] Plastic Bank, Global Impact – Indonesia: BPJS Kesehatan health insurance, BPJS Ketenagakerjaan life/accident insurance, Alfamart grocery vouchers. Brazil: monthly grocery baskets. All markets: school supplies, connectivity, fintech, interest-free loans. https://plasticbank.com/global-impact/
[14] IBM Case Study, Plastic Bank – IBM LinuxONE, Cognition Foundry, blockchain platform, supply chain traceability, digital wallets. https://www.ibm.com/case-studies/plastic-bank-systems-linuxone
[15] UN SDGs, The Ocean Cleanup Partnership – 90% by 2040 goal, Coca-Cola/Maersk/Kia partnerships, sunglasses launch 2020. https://sdgs.un.org/partnerships/cleanup-90-floating-ocean-plastic-2040
Methodology: Data reflects publicly available figures as of April 2026. Plastic Bank figures sourced from plasticbank.com/global-impact/. The Ocean Cleanup figures sourced from theoceancleanup.com updates and third-party reporting. All source URLs verified at publication.