Australian business Lo Bros, the owner of drinks brand Not Soda, said it has removed 17,000kg of plastic from the ocean in Indonesia, equivalent in weight to one million plastic bottles, and representing the weight of a “humpback whale”.
In a collaboration with Seven Clean Seas, the bottles have been removed from the Indonesian islands of Batam and Bintan. The two sites were selected based on their severe and growing situation of plastic pollution, and the lack of adequate waste management infrastructure in place.
The company said the recovered ocean plastic will now be sent for sorting, separating and classification at Seven Clean Sea’s materials recovery facility (MRF), where it is then recycled and repurposed into the circular economy or sent for secondary processing where necessary. R&D will also be conducted on recovered ocean plastic to improve and enhance recyclable methods in future, according to Lo Bros.
The clean up effort by Lo Bros and Seven Clean Seas have also supported hundreds of local jobs in Indonesia, and boosted 60 families across the targeted areas with living wages and fair working conditions, the company claimed.
Removing the equivalent weight of one million plastic bottles from the ocean is the first chapter in a large-scale cleanup by Not Soda, which said last year it pledged to remove the equivalent weight of five million plastic bottles in ocean plastic (170,000kg) from the seas by 2025.
For every can of Lo Bros' Not Soda sold, the company said it funds the removal of the equivalent weight of two plastic soft drink bottles from marine environments through its partnership with Seven Clean Seas. Not Soda funds the removal of the equivalent weight of two plastic bottles, but the plastic removed encompasses all forms of ocean plastic in the area.
The weight of a plastic bottle (a 375ml plastic soft drink bottle and cap) is 17 grams, which means Seven Clean Seas removes 34 grams of plastic for every 375ml can of Not Soda sold.
Every year, up to 34 billion plastic bottles enter the ocean. In Australia, 75 per cent of all beverage aluminium is collected for recycling. Unlike plastic, which can only be recycled one to three times before degrading and being sent to landfill, aluminium is infinitely recyclable.
A recent report in the scientific journal Plos One found an estimated 171 trillion pieces of plastic are now floating in the world's oceans, a tenfold increase from 16 trillion pieces in 2005. Scientists have warned it could nearly triple by 2040 if no action is taken.
Seven Clean Seas co-founder, Tom Peacock-Nazil, said “The seas are awesome, and they're filled with plastic. Luckily our mates at Lo Bros share our love for the ocean and partnered up Not Soda with Seven Clean Seas to do something about it. Now, after only a handful of months into the partnership, we've already hit an incredible million-bottle ocean clean up milestone.
Lo Bros founder Didi Lo said: “Plastic pollution continues to rise and disadvantaged nations remain the ones bearing the brunt of this issue. Seven Clean Seas, with the aid of Not Soda, has done exceptionally well to reach this goal of recovering the equivalent weight of one million plastic bottles from these waterways. It is critical that we acknowledge this achievement, but we also realise how far we have to go to remove all plastic from our oceans to protect them from environmental disaster.”
Lo Bros said it is a Net Zero Plastic Brand, through its partnership with Plastic Collective. It says the audit by Plastic Collective measured the company’s own plastic footprint globally, including all packaging, warehousing and freight, bottle cap seals and pallet wrap. After the audit, a reduction plan has been put in place to reduce the amount of plastic used, as well as all unavoidable plastic being offset through Plastic Collective.
