Did you know that 50% of plastic items are used just once and then thrown away? Which is why products made from ocean waste. All that waste has to end up somewhere. Unfortunately, millions and millions of tonnes of harmful plastic waste has ended up in the world’s oceans.
Here at Greenredeem we like to accentuate the positive. We’re big fans of the companies finding innovative ways to upcycle plastic ocean waste into brand new products. Helping coastal communities around the world clean up their shorelines and providing jobs and income in the process! Take a look at these waste-busting designs…
Ocean Sole’s toys
Can you guess what these colourful giraffe sculptures were? That’s right – plastic flip flops. From the shores of the Indian Ocean, where they wash up in their millions, they pose a real threat to marine life.
Manufacturer Ocean Sole recycles around 400,000 polluting flip flops each year. They provide fairly paid jobs for over 100 people in communities along Kenya’s coast and in Nairobi’s slums. Take a look at their fantastic work in this short video:
Interface’s carpet tiles
The luxurious carpet tiles below began life as reef-swamping, marine-life-endangering plastic fishing nets, abandoned by trawlers off the Philippines and left to drift.
Interface, the eco-friendly flooring company behind the product, pays local people to clear reef zones and beaches of this waste material. The tangle of fishing net is carefully cleaned and upcycled into a hard-wearing yarn. It is then woven into the elegant carpets you see above.
Sustainable Surf’s surfboards
Waste to Waves was an idea by surfers in California. Fed up with seeing the beaches they love strewn with non-biodegradable polystyrene packaging waste, they set up a beach-cleaning partnership with a polystyrene recycling company. Guess what? The polystyrene the surfers collect now transforms into new surf boards!
Method’s recovered plastic bottles
Eco-friendly cleaning products are Method’s forte, with recycled plastic bottles as standard, but this cool company has gone a step further. Working with 3,000 beach clean volunteers in Hawaii and then painstakingly sorting through the collected plastic by hand, the Method team created a limited edition range of dishwashing and hand soaps with bottles made from 10% ocean plastic and 90% standard recycled plastic.
At the moment, the technology doesn’t exist to allow mass production of ocean plastic recycled bottles; however we hope it’s only a matter of time!
Bureo’s skateboards
Each skateboard made by Bureo features a “custom fish design with gripping scale pattern” – makes sense, as the plastic board ‘deck’ is 100% recycled from discarded fishing nets. Supported by a grant from eco-innovating outdoor clothing company Patagonia, Bureo have set up South America’s first fishing net collection and recycling programme.
