Robert Clyne the founder of Clean Sea Fuels has a very interesting business proposition: turn the Great Pacific Garbage Patch into energy, but they need your help. He and his business partner Michael have built a mobile machine they call a Mini-Eco-Refinery (Mini for short) that can recycle waste plastic, engine oil, and hydrocarbon sludge into pure diesel. Their goal is to create value for the communities in which they work, radically improve the environment of beaches and oceans, and all while making enough money to sustain and grow their operation to a global scale. That means: People, Planet, Profit in that order.

Mini the Mini Eco Refinery

Their team is a mix of expertise and talent. Robert holds a PhD in anthropology from Yale and has more than 15 years experience in business and international cultural entrepreneurship. Michael is a master engineer and notorious tinker who has built enterprise level machinery on four continents.

Step 1: Mini the Machine (DONE!)

This powerhouse team has already bootstrapped Clean Sea Fuels for a year and a half and have designed their mobile refinery the Mini-Eco-Refinery, sourced parts for Mini from China, and already begun manufacturing her and her sisters in Thailand, but before deployment to the oceans, Clean Sea Fuels needs $50,000 to begin testing and cleaning up plastic and oil from beaches and communities in Ghana.

They have a launch page and are collecting emails for when they launch their campaign next month.

Step 2: The Beaches of Ghana

Ghana is a west African country of great natural beauty, but only too often are its beaches, seas and coasts covered in plastic and oil pollution. In 2012 Clean Sea Fuels identified Ghana as the ideal location to begin testing the social, technical, and economic processes that will allow them to scale across the oceans by 2016.

Ghanian Beach

Step 3: Going to the Oceans

The plastic of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is made up of very small particles of plastic and is therefore very hard to collect. However, an innovative young Dutch man, Boyan Slat, introduced a fascinating solution to extracting the plastic from the pacific using stationary platforms that collect and centrifuge the plastic out of the water. Here is where Clean Sea Fuels comes in. Using Mini Eco Refineries, these platforms can safely convert the centrifuged ocean plastic into fuel to run itself (in addition to solar panels) or to store and then sell the diesel to offset the expenses of building and maintaining these platforms.

Technology can do so much if we all support it. Be sure to sign up to help Robert and Mike and entrepreneurs like them to truly make a difference.

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