Vision + Innovation: brands making a difference for our oceans

Ocean plastic recovered by Waterkeeper Alliance for BIONIC (image: BIONIC)

While the Ocean Cleanup has only just begun to remove plastic from the Great Pacific Garbage patch, a bunch of innovative businesses have already started sourcing and recycling plastic reclaimed from beaches, oceans and coastal communities and creating some cool stuff.

The plastic pollution problem

There are 5 TRILLION pieces of plastic polluting the world’s oceans, including around 640,000 tonnes of discarded fishing nets, concentrated in five ocean gyres and washing ashore on numerous beaches around the world. As well as having devastating effects on marine life, ocean plastic breaks down into micro-plastics which enter the food chain (that thing we’re at the top of), with no doubt some pretty horrendous impacts in store for us too. But it may not be too late to save the oceans (and ourselves).

The plastic pollution crisis has inspired worldwide action by governments, community groups and businesses to both clean up the crap we’ve dumped in our oceans and to stop it at the source. Amongst this action The Ocean Cleanup stands out as our best hope of getting plastic out of the ocean…