At a Glance

Dutch inventor Boyan Slat will deploy his invention, bound for the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, on Sept. 8.Computer simulations indicate the contraption could remove 50 percent of the plastic polluting the world's oceans within five years.

A young Dutch inventor who made headlines in 2013 because of a pipe dream to rid the oceans of plastic with adevice he envisioned is finally getting the chance to puthis invention to the test.

On Sept. 8,Boyan Slat and his team at the non-profit organization he founded,the Ocean Cleanup Project, will watch as his2,000-foot-long invention leaves San Franciscofor the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, the largest collection of ocean plastics in the world located between California and Hawaii.

The 23-year-old's contraption is a series of booms and platforms meant to scoop up trash from the surface of the ocean. The former engineering school student who left his studies to pursue his dream said he decided to use booms rather than nets to prevent scooping up marine wildlife along with the trash.

(WATCH:)

The image above shows a computer rendering of a floating screen developed by The Ocean Cleanup to collect marine plastic from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

(The Ocean Cleanup)

According to the project's website, computer simulations predict a full employment of his collection systems could,within five years,scoop up of the 5 trillion pieces of trash that now pollute the world's oceans.

Slatsaid his dream to rid the world's oceans of plastic began after a run-in with marine debris.

“When I was 16 years old,I was diving in Greece and I realized I came across ,” Slat told WBUR. “That, for me, started this mission to invent a structure that could actually clean this up.”

Slat has had a lot of support in his quest to rid the oceans of plastics, including hefty donations from philanthropists, among them billionaire , USA Today reports.

Time Magazine named Slat's contraption"one of the world's best inventions of 2015," according to the project's website, but some marine experts don't think Slat's device is a good idea.

“We have serious concerns ," Sue Kinsey of Britain's Marine Conservation Societytold the Telegraph.

“It seems likely that wildlife will be affected, especially the smaller floating plankton that many creatures depend on and those organisms that passively float in the oceans who won't be able to avoid these arrays," she added.

She also voiced concerns about climate-warming greenhouse gases which could be released during the cleanup.