Resue and refill with Ocean Bottle

We talked to the brains behind Ocean bottle which is the new idea of using packaging. The bottle itself is made of recycled materials and instead of recycling your bottle you will reuse it, over and over again. In addition, the bottle have a chip in the bottom which make it possible for Ocean Bottle to partner with retailers to allow them to fund collection of plastic whenever someone refills their Ocean Bottle with something like a coffee or a smoothie – cool isn´t it?

1. What´s the main idée of Ocean bottle? 
The benefits of the Ocean Bottle are that we collect the equivalent of 1000 ocean-bound plastic bottles for each purchase, as well as building much needed recycling infrastructure in Haiti, Philippines, Indonesia and Brazil. Beyond the impact, we designed the bottle from the ground up and addressed all the major pain points people had about the current bottles in the market. For instance, the entire bottle can be taken apart to be cleaned and it has a simple 180 turn lid that you know is closed and won’t leak. We also have an NFC chip in the bottom of the bottle which will allow us to partner with retailers to allow them to fund collection of plastic whenever someone refills their Ocean Bottle with something like a coffee or a smoothie! This is something for the future and this summer we are entering into pilot schemes with cafes around the world.

2. What´s so special about the ocean bottle? 
The money we raise goes straight to Plastic Bank – a fully transparent organisation tackling the ocean plastic crisis but also doing it by empowering local plastic collectors in the process. They pay 3x the market rate for the plastic and hold their collectors’ funds for them securely. These funds can be exchanged for cash, health insurance, solar panels, school fees etc. The funds also go towards building recycling infrastructure in these coastal communities which means that a lasting system is built rather than this just being a beach clean up. This long term impact is what is most important to us as we need to stop the flow of plastic in to our oceans first before we tackle what is already out there. They have some a seamless operation and it is a really awesome to be able to support their work.

3. When do you realized that we really need to do something about the plastic situation in our oceans? 
The problem has been known for years but there has been very little action. As with all the environmental problems we have at the moment – there needs to be many solutions but plastics has, until recently, seemed to be entirely ignored so Will and I felt passionate about doing something to bring this issue to the public and make it as easy as possible for people to make an impact.

4. How did you came up with the idea?  
The idea came about through the realisation that the rate at which plastic pollution enters our oceans was accelerating and that there was no tangible product that embodied the fight against this. Will had loads of ideas of what this product could be but we agreed that a reusable bottle would definitely be the most effective symbol to build a movement around.

5. What´s your goal for the future?                     
This year we have already funded collection equivalent of 9.3 million plastic bottles but our target is to end the year with 35 million. This is the first step towards our target of collecting at least 3 billion annually by 2023.

6. Have always been in the packaging industry or is this your first packaging? If it is, what make you start with the industry? 
This is our first product! We wanted to get involved in the industry as we thought packaging needs to become more sustainable as well as trying to find ways to solve the problems unsustainable products have already made.