By Sharon Atieno
A group of international companies have come under one consortium to increase efforts geared at solving plastic pollution in oceans through re-using waste materials.
“As we’ve become more engaged in the challenges facing our oceans, it’s become increasingly clear that the solution to marine plastic pollution requires bold innovation and open collaboration,” said Kevin Brown, chief supply chain officer at Dell Technologies.
Research shows that an estimated 8 million tonnes of plastic waste entered the ocean in 2010, and if trends do not change more than 150 million tonnes of plastic waste will have entered the ocean by 2025.
“At Lonely Whale we believe that collaboration is the key to solving all our environmental issues including marine litter,” said Dune Ives, Executive director Lonely Whale and managing director of NextWave. “What one company knows can be shared with another company to help them advance more quickly rather than both companies trying to solve the same issues and repeating the same mistakes.”
The consortium, NextWave Plastics is an initiative of Dell Technologies and Lonely Whale. It consists of several companies which intercept mismanaged plastic waste that is not being collected or is unlikely to be collected, found on the ground within 50 kilometers of a waterway or coastal area, and converts them into a new product.
“NextWave companies are making a difference today through the development of commercially viable and operational ocean-bound plastics supply chains and integration of this non-virgin material into products and packaging,” stated Ives.
HP Inc, for instance, has transformed 250 tonnes of ocean-bound plastics in Haiti into ink cartridges else, this would have been around 8 million bottles deposited in to the Carribean Sea.
“No company can solve this issue alone, and we are excited to welcome new member companies to the cause and continue to encourage others to work together to further advance NextWave’s mission and prevent even more plastic from entering the ocean,” said Brown.
Apart from HP Inc and Dell technologies, other member companies include: General Motors, Trek Bicycle, Herman Miller, Interface, Humanscale, Bureo and Ikea which are working on similar initiatives.
The members of the consortium are currently sourcing verified ocean-bound plastics from Cameroon, Chile, Denmark, Haiti, Indonesia and the Philippines, and are committed to expand supply chain efforts in their source countries.
In the spirit of scaling up, the member companies are adding new sources of supply from a minimum of three additional countries including India, Taiwan and Thailand by the year 2025. Through these efforts, they will also expand the types of material sourced and will work closely with other supply chain development initiatives to create scale within priority communities.
In line with the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 14.1 of preventing and reducing marine pollution of all kinds, particularly from land-based activities, including marine debris and nutrient pollution by 2025, the member companies are dedicated to divert a minimum of 25,000 tonnes of plastics -the equivalent of 1.2 billion plastic water bottles-from entering the ocean by the end of 2025.
