The Ocean Cleanup Foundation's 21-year-old Chief Executive Boyan Slat, who first had the idea for the system as a teenager, hopes to use the technology in an enormous area where trash circulates in the northern Pacific Ocean, from 2020.

Experts have sounded the alarm in recent years over millions of tons of plastic pollution floating in the ocean that is killing vast numbers of seabirds, marine mammals, sea turtles and other creatures.

The foundation, which employs 50 engineers and researchers, received 1.5 million euros ($1.7 million) in support from the Dutch government and marine services company Boskalis, along with an anonymous private donor, for the prototype.

The full-scale version would work by allowing ocean currents to passively funnel trash for easy collection, rather than using vessels to actively gather it.