Ocean Plastic Pollution and The Startups Fixing It
An irrefutable environmental issue the world can get behind
Ocean plastic pollution is an overwhelming issue.
Over 10 million metric tons of ocean plastic flows into the ocean every year on top of approximately 220 million metric tons currently present. 99% of this plastic resides near the surface until winds, waves, and biofouling (when shellfish/algae accumulate on the plastic) cause it to sink. Over time it will disintegrate and contaminate the ocean food web.
There isn’t an impact-tech professional alive that doesn’t wish they could build a solution to ocean plastic pollution.
Plastic pollution is frustrating because we use plastic in absolutely everything (clothing, coffee machines, paint, cars, facewash, and so on).
We use it in everything because plastic is a remarkable material.
Patrick Worms from World Agroforestry said it best:
“[Plastic] is an extraordinarily versatile material, dirt cheap, stable across a vast range of environmental conditions, and consuming far fewer resources per unit of service rendered than any alternative.
For example, a reusable glass bottle will have to make the trip from bottling plant to consumer and back around 1000 times to have less of an impact on emissions than 1000 disposable plastic bottles - and the likelihood that a glass bottle survives 1000 trips without breaking is absurdly low.”
Plastic is pretty brilliant… until it leaks into the environment where it absorbs toxins, strangles marine life, and breaks down to the point where it is now in all of our bodies.
Let’s take a look at the journey plastic takes from production to ocean
Here’s an example LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) of said journey:
Plastic is manufactured into a bottle, absorbing flame retardants, plasticizers, and chemicals like BPAs
People buy that bottle and ingest those chemicals, then throw it away
Once thrown away, as only 8% of plastic get recycled globally, it’ll likely find its way, if not to landfill, into a river and ultimately the ocean
On that journey it will absorb toxins from the environment like PCBs, PCNs, and heavy metals
It will also begin breaking down into micro and nanoplastic particles, which get absorbed by microbes, which get eaten by fish, which get eaten by bigger fish, and which get eaten be you and me.
Plus, these toxins get concentrated as they reach us, causing cancer, infertility, and a range of chronic diseases… just lovely.
Note, I simplified this process, the reality is even worse.
So how on God’s green Earth do we use technology to fix this?
Let’s take a systems-level approach. We can:
Prevent plastic reaching the ocean in the first place, by
Sending it to landfills
Incentivizing and improving recycling
Collecting it on its journey to the ocean
Use alternative materials instead of plastic
Seaweed, mycelium (mushrooms), PHA, chitin are all organic-based materials that are compostable, decomposable, and/or biodegradable
Collect it once it’s concentrated in the ocean
All of these are valid ideas, but who’s going to pay for them? If you’re a business-savvy impact entrepreneur, you know there’s millions of consumers willing to pay for a product or service that’s cool, inspiring, sexy, and businesses willing to pay for something that makes them more money.
Here are some of my favorite plastic startups with varying strategies:
1) Prevention
AMP Robotics is developing AI-based robotic systems that sort recyclable materials. They make recycling more efficient.
The Great Bubble Barrier catches plastic as it flows down rivers and canals by creating a bubble curtain that guides plastic into a catchment system, enabling users to collect it before reaching the ocean.
2) Alternative materials
Sway creates thin-film plastic packaging made from seaweed.
Cove is developing the world’s first truly biodegradable (90-days) water bottle made of PHA (a polyester produced in nature). They have a very cool video on their website where you can watch the bottle degrade over 90-days sped up.
Cruz Foam has created compostable styrofoam from chitin, a material found in shrimp shells and is a plentiful by-product from shrimp processing.
3) Collected and transformed
Ocean Bottle funds the collection of 1000 plastic bottles (11.4kg equivalent) for every Ocean Bottle sold, which is also made from recycled materials. Love them… I have 3!
Solgaard creates novel travel gear (e.g., luggage) from ocean-bound plastic. Every purchase saves the equivalent of 229 plastic bottles from the ocean.
As you can see, solutions exist and are in play in their respective markets.
What these companies need to do is scale to create sizable impacts. Given the immensity of the ocean plastic pollution problem, and even though there are hundreds of plastics startups, there is still plenty of room for further innovation.
That innovation can come from anywhere in the value-chain, from materials production to plastic collection. Regardless of one’s views on the severity of climate change, plastic pollution is an environmental issue we can all get behind. This makes it an exciting prospect for prospective impact entrepreneurs.
The Data
As you can see from ourworldindata.org, plastic production is only increasing. No doubt this will mean more plastic in our oceans for years to come. Notably, most of the plastic entering the ocean comes from less economically developed countries in Southeast Asia…
This graph gives me hope because it shows first world nations (China, United Kingdom, United States) as minimally polluting to the ocean. If we can economically develop the countries who are the most polluting, their plastic pollution will go down thanks to better waste management and innovation.
In summary, we gotta hand it to plastic… it is a remarkable material. Yet, its remarkability also makes it a pain in the butt. It’s clear from the above graphs which countries need the most innovation (as well as waste management, to be fair) if we are to seriously limit plastic getting into the ocean. For plastic that’s already in the ocean, we need cool and sexy products to incentivize collection.
It is a shame that the only way to rid the ocean of plastic pollution is to figure out a way for someone’s business to make money, but it’s the reality of the situation and the capitalist world we live in.
As ocean conservationists (I’m assuming you are if you’re reading this), we have no choice but to embrace business fundamentals and push forward onto economically sensible solutions.
