“This sun, this sea, my heart leaping with youth. Tenderness and glory merge in blue and yellow” – Albert Camus

Tracking every pound

4ocean is a business that recovers, retrieves and treats waste plastic from the seas of the earth. It then makes and sells bracelets with this cleaned and recycled plastic. Better on your wrist than in a dolphin’s mouth.
Their professional, full-time captains and crews recover harmful marine debris from the ocean. They also work to stop plastic pollution at its source by educating people about this global crisis.
It is not a charity. It is a public benefit corporation, which is a legal structure for mission-focused businesses that prioritise impact alongside profit.
Every 4ocean product purchased comes with a One Pound Promise to pull one pound (in weight) of trash from the ocean, rivers, and coastlines. Every purchase helps fund the global ocean clean-up operation.
The sustainability marketplace is crowded with companies that claim their products are made from recycled ocean plastic. However, most of them can’t trace the origins of their plastic. From the moment it’s recovered, every pound of 4ocean waste is tracked through the entire supply chain. Their documentation process sets a new industry standard of accuracy and accountability – all of it audited and verified quarterly by the Better Business Bureau.

15m

This year 4ocean reached their 15 million pound milestone of recovered plastic. It took them a year to recover their first million – now it takes two months to reach the same number, with their improved technology, better equipment and a larger fleet of dedicated vessels.
Plastic waste entering the seas is increasing each year with much of the plastic entering the seas is in particles smaller than 5 millimetres. It is estimated that there is approximately 150 million tonnes of plastic pollution in the world’s oceans, estimated to grow to 250 million tonnes in 2025.
The Ocean Conservancy reported that China, Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam dump more plastic in the sea than all other countries combined.
Everyone talks about saving the oceans by stopping using plastic bags, straws and single use packaging. That’s important, but when 4ocean head out on the ocean, that’s not what they find. The largest single type of plastic pollution (10%) is discarded and lost nets from the fishing industry.

Fish

For centuries, humans have relied on the ocean’s abundance of fish for sustenance. Today, seafood is the world’s largest traded food commodity and the primary source of protein for approximately 3 billion people. The industry also provides employment and income for millions of people, which is particularly important for coastal communities in developing economies.
As the global population grows, so does our demand for seafood. Advancements in commercial fishing technology mean humans now have the ability to wipe out entire fish populations in a very short period of time. Today, as much as 80% of the world’s fisheries are either overfished or collapsing. Scientists fear that continuing to fish at our current rate will cause a collapse of the world’s fisheries and have a significant impact on global food security.
Sustainable seafood is any seafood that is caught or farmed with minimal environmental and social impact. Fisheries are generally considered sustainable when they target plentiful species, follow local regulations and guidelines, and rely on scientific data and ongoing population monitoring to ensure the fishery is well managed.
There is an ongoing debate in ocean conservation circles about whether fishing can ever be truly sustainable. Many indigenous cultures have sustainably fished their waters for thousands of years.

James Neophytou