Massive Boom Hopes to Clean up Pacific Ocean’s Plastic Trash

A ship tows The Ocean Cleanup’s first buoyant trash-collecting device toward the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco en route to the Pacific Ocean on Sept. 8, 2018. AP Photo/Lorin Eleni Gill

SAN FRANCISCO—Engineers are deploying a trash collection device to corral plastic litter floating between California and Hawaii in an attempt to clean up the world’s largest garbage patch in the heart of the Pacific Ocean.

The 2,000-foot (600-meter) long floating boom is being towed from San Francisco to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch—an island of trash twice the size of Texas.