An ocean cleaning system has begun collecting plastic rubbish from the Pacific Ocean after one year of testing, DPA reported.

"Today we announce that our cleaning system in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch has been catching plastic for the first time," the inventor of the system - Boyan Slat said at a press conference in Rotterdam.

The cleaning system can trap plastic of any size, including microplastics. The project, launched in 2013, aims to install floating cleaners at five landfills formed by the ocean currents. The first was erected on the largest island of garbage - about 2,000 miles off the coast of California.

The facility consists of two connected curved plastic pipes about 600 m long, floating on the surface of the water. Below them there is a 3-meter screen. Garbage enters the pipes and is collected from there. The construction was pulled into the open ocean in September 2018, but had to be returned to land after it appeared that there were problems with the retaining of the collected garbage. These problems are now removed and the installation returned to the ocean. 

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