Meet our new bottle partner: Ocean Bottle
Making Waves with Ocean Bottle
We’re so excited to be working with the brilliant team at Ocean Bottle, collaborating on a whole systems approach to plastic pollution and prevention. As an official partner, they supported our World Refill Day campaign, helped us get our message in a bottle around the world and even joined us in Central London as we delivered our letter calling for reuse targets to the headquarters of three political parties. We can’t wait to continue collaborating and are excited for what’s to come. Here’s Impact Lead at Ocean Bottle, Thalia Day to tell us more about how Ocean Bottle is having an impact in the ocean and around the world.
Who are we?
At Ocean Bottle, we are dedicated to tackling the ocean plastic crisis head-on. With every product sold, we fund the collection of 11.4 kg of ocean-bound plastic. That’s the same weight as 1,000 plastic bottles! We focus on removing plastic from communities, rivers, and coastal waterways before it reaches the ocean; in regions that are vulnerable to the accumulation of plastic pollution. Many of these communities and environments are facing an influx of plastic pollution, which they didn’t consume or produce in the first place – we now have an incredible opportunity to support these communities, and prevent plastic from entering the ocean!
How do we support ocean health and social equity?
To date, we’ve allocated 15% of our product revenue to pay plastic collectors from different areas of the world, where we are also building waste management infrastructure for more circular systems. To support communities socially, workers also get access to healthcare, education, and financial support. As a result, this helps improve their community wellbeing beyond cleaning up their immediate environment. We work in areas with severe plastic waste and poor waste management systems – these places can struggle with bad water quality, health hazards, and soil damage, all caused by plastic pollution. Sometimes, when there is nowhere to transport the waste to, communities are forced to burn the plastic waste – a major health and environmental hazard!
Did you know? The majority of ocean plastic is transported there via rivers! So, we focus a lot of our efforts in collecting plastic from rivers, which carry plastic from inland areas to the sea. Out of the 10 top countries burdened with plastic pollution entering the ocean, we work in at least four of them to maximise our impact. We support various collection communities in Brazil, Kenya, Egypt, India, Indonesia, and the Philippines. And we won’t stop here! We are continuously examining the most vulnerable regions overwhelmed with plastic pollution, and we hope to expand our collection points by next year.
How do we track the collection amount for each bottle purchased?
Once the ocean-bound plastic waste is collected, it is weighed, sorted, and recycled according to its most valuable use. We track and verify each step tracked, collecting data such as the collectors name, and the type and colour of plastic. We wouldn’t be able to work as close as possible to the ground without our partners, Plastic Bank, Plastics for Change, and rePurpose Global. They are essential to our mission! They each underwent a rigorous due diligence process assessing their ability to create additional collection efforts, build long term waste management solutions, address real community needs, and follow best in class compliance standards. As such, our partners’ collection process and health & safety standards are certified by the likes of GRS, WFTO, OBP and VERRA.
We turn this incredibly powerful data into meaningful stories for our community via our Impact Engine, a digital tool we have built to associate actions and purchases from our community with unique collection impact from the ground.
What kind of social projects do we support and why?
Much of our impact is measured in numbers – including our recent milestone of preventing over 1 billion bottles, in weight, of plastic waste from entering the ocean! But our impact is not limited to our plastic collection numbers. From the ground, we measure the positive impact on communities, gathering information on topics such as how many were enrolled into a school? How many workers gained access to healthcare last month? How many women received nutrition kits during and after pregnancy? Here are a few of our latest stories from this year’s deep dive community projects: In Puducherry, India, we supported the transformation of an informal waste recovery system into a closed-loop (complete recycling) collection centre. Similarly, on the Andaman Islands, we improved waste management practices by upgrading collection processes and supporting fair trade practices. In early 2023, our efforts resulted in the collection of over 358,000 kg of ocean-bound plastic, supporting 170 waste collectors!
In late 2023, we supported the construction of homes for collector families in India. Built from recycled ocean-bound plastic, these homes provide safety and stability for families like Haider and Altaf’s, who now enjoy secure housing with their families.
Why are we partnered with City to Sea?
Embedded in our product design, and through our partnership with City to Sea and Refill, we are able to disrupt the demand for single-use plastic bottles. By doing this, we can prevent the extraction and production of plastic, lowering the global impact on the planet. With the help of City to Sea, we can tap into the refill and reuse movement, amplifying their message of increasing reusables by 2030! This is a powerful knowledge sharing partnership, where two like-minded organisations, both on a mission to mitigate plastic pollution, join forces to create a bigger impact.
Ocean Bottle x City to Sea
Each 90% recycled, stainless steel bottle purchased will help fund the collection of 1,000 plastic bottles (in weight) from entering the ocean and give £5 back to City to Sea to help fund our vital plastic-preventing, planet-protecting campaigning work.
Use the code CITY2SEAXOB10 for 10% off your very own bottle and make some waves with Ocean Bottle.