Project Nereus
Plastic Collection AUV System

Timeframe: 10 weeks
Year: 2025
Skills: Gravity Sketch, Visualization, Human Factors

This speculative project envisions a solution for collecting and removing plastic from our oceans.

The ocean is drowning in plastic. Each year, more than 8 million tons drift into open waters, breaking down into smaller pieces but never truly disappearing. Most cleanup efforts focus on coastlines and rivers, leaving the vast gyres of the open ocean untouched. These remote regions hold some of the highest concentrations of plastic on Earth, yet solutions for removing it remain almost non-existent.

Takeaways

- Learned how to balance technical feasibility with imagination, creating a forward-looking yet grounded design narrative.

- Explored speculative design as a way to address large-scale environmental challenges.

- Drew inspiration from marine biology, studying manta ray gill rakers to inform filtration concepts.