Dear Mrs. Marquez, 

 

Plastic floats around in an oasis, but only for them, 1.8 trillion pieces of plastic float happily around, covering an area twice the size of the United States of America, an area of 1.6 million square kilometers, or 1,600,000,000,000 square meters. But is this the life you want, with the size of this massive dump expanding every day? Many people have opposed plastic but not many have actually taken action, and even of those who do take action, only a small percentage have an impact.  there is close to none, but of those, there is Boyan Slat, who started as a teenager, but has grown and has proven scientists wrong. I strongly believe that you should permit me to continue studying this amazing man. This is because the air around us is deteriorating, and Boyan Slat is sacrificing his entire life for the better of humanity, and without him the state of our environment would gradually deteriorate until it is nothing but a world where we try to outlive our problems and not try to fix them. 

 

First and Foremost, Boyan Slat is sacrificing his entire time to dedicate his life to cleaning up the pollution around us. He founded the organization, "The Ocean Cleanup", which is a non-profit organization where he makes more and more exceptional designs to help rid our oceans of plastic. His latest design being the interceptor, a boat with a long arm that runs on solar power and lives up to its name. Recently, the crew have discovered that most of the ocean's plastic comes from rivers, so they position the boat on one side of the river and have the long metal arm run across it, and still allows the clean water under it (currents) to run across to still "fuel" the oceans, but the pollution that floats above is caught and sent up a lift which leads to a few dumpsters lined up so when one gets filled, the machine extends the conveyer belt to the next one. Considering how much work was put into this is unimaginable, but when you add the fact that Boyan Slat could've been making money to become rich one day, but decided to help the environment and the future generations is even more outstanding. There are some other people who have wanted to help the environment, but have failed because of flaws in their designs and they have given up. However, Boyan Slat pushed through all the barriers and obstacles, at the age of 19, he started the Ocean Cleanup. Scientists were doubtful about his design at first, but he proved them wrong. He had failures as well, and the team he had hired sometimes also looked down, but they never gave up. They persevered, and are still expanding after 8 years since they started. 

 

Furthermore, the environment is gradually deteriorating. While environmentalists, such as Greta Thunberg, have urged governments to change their ways. Boyan Slat is taking direct action and is always looking for options to help our world become better. More and more pollution is launched into the atmosphere every day. But if none of us take action, our world will turn into a dystopia with pollution everywhere (as shown in the movie High-5) if we don't take action. So essentially, Boyan Slat is encouraging many people across the globe to take action which is one thing, but he also is not a hypocrite and takes action himself to find efficient ways to run themselves out of business, which would mean ridding the oceans of plastic. 

 

To conclude, I believe Boyan Slat is a very notable person because he is sacrificing his own time for a better world and actually takes action against this. Every day, pollution only increases, but if we take action like Boyan Slat, maybe we can heal the dying state of the environment. This is why I believe you should give me permission to continue studying Boyan Slat. 

 

Yours sincerely, 

 

Michael Hu 

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