In the article “Boy Genius Boyan Slat’s Giant Ocean Machine Is Real”, Schiller (2017) explores the potential of a huge ocean cleaning initiative envisioned by Slat. According to the article, the discovery of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch by Charles Moore in 1997 trigger Slat to develop the Ocean Cleanup machine in 2011. The article states that Slat’s design functions as colossal floating booms that will entrap and gather waste which will allow for convenient disposal. He also made significant improvements to the design in hopes of increasing efficiency, reducing cost and saving time and effort. The Ocean Cleanup Foundation had raised most of its fund from Silicon Valley. The revised design will be modular so that it can be scalable and operates independently. A former failed prototype had also provided insights on how Slat can improve on his design. He claims to have done extensive simulations on the booms and the Patch and had estimated that tons of waste could be collected annually. Schiller learns about Slat’s long-term plans during a conversation in which he hopes to recycle the plastic waste into marketable products to finance the project.
(189 words)
James Tan 
If you put a comma after the article’s title, you should put one in front of the title as well. Good use of reporting verbs. Instead of “trigger”, change it to a more formal verb, such as ‘inspired/motivated’. Be careful of your use of tenses and subject verb agreement – e.g “Foundation raised most of its funds…” Try to avoid the use of the past perfect tense – e.g “had estimated” should be “estimated”, and “had also provided insights” should be, “provided insights TO how Slat…”
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