Megacities, Microplastics, and Machines: How AI, Drones, and Data Are Powering Asia’s Fight Against Ocean Plastic

From megacities and rivers to the open Pacific, much of the world’s ocean plastic problem starts — and can be stopped — in Asia. This talk takes you inside The Ocean Cleanup’s work across East and Southeast Asia, showing how AI, drones, and real-time data are being used to track plastic, stop it in rivers, and clean it up before it reaches the ocean. Along the way, we’ll look at why microplastics matter, how everyday urban life connects to ocean health, and why technology — paired with local action — is becoming one of the most powerful tools in the fight against ocean plastic.

Montgomery (“Monty”) Simus is Senior Advisor, Blue Finance at The Ocean Cleanup, the Dutch nonprofit organization developing and scaling technologies to remove plastic pollution from the world’s oceans and rivers. His work focuses on the intersection of environmental infrastructure, ocean policy, and innovative finance — including how plastic remediation, river systems, and coastal resilience can become investable components of 21st-century infrastructure strategy.

Monty is also a member of the Treatied Spaces Research Group at the University of Birmingham, where his interdisciplinary PhD research examines conflicts surrounding resource extraction, Indigenous jurisdiction, and environmental governance through the case of Pebble Mine in Bristol Bay, Alaska.

In 2023, he served as an inaugural Impact Leader-in-Residence at Harvard University’s Advanced Leadership Initiative, focused on global water accessibility, resilient infrastructure, and sustainable finance. He currently serves as an Associate with the Harvard-China Project on Energy, Economy, and Environment at Harvard University’s John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and as an Associate Fellow of Branford College at Yale University.

Previously, Monty spent more than two decades working across impact investing, frontier markets, catalytic philanthropy, and sustainable development initiatives spanning Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. He holds degrees from Yale University and Harvard University.