End of the Year Progress
With Thanksgiving approaching next week, we thought it would be appropriate to acknowledge how grateful we are for all the organizations, companies, elected officials, and citizens combating the ocean plastics and plastic pollution crises. It’s *clearly* been a challenging year – and COVID has increased our plastic trash by about 30% – but it’s encouraging to see the great work that’s been accomplished despite the many hurdles.
Here are some big ones that come to mind for us. Share your favorites in the comments and let us know what else is happening out there to save our oceans!
UPSTREAM SOLUTIONS – THE EFFORT TO TURN OFF THE PLASTICS TAP
SeaChange 100% supports upstream solutions that reduce the amount of plastic we produce and consume globally. Just because we’re cleaning up the mess that’s already been made – and continues to escalate –we, in no way, support doing business as usual when it comes to fossil-fuel derived plastics. Here are some of the efforts and organizations in this space we’re grateful kept moving forward in 2020.
ON THE GOVERNMENTAL AND POLICY FRONT
The Save Our Seas 2.0 Act was passed by the United States Senate, “bipartisan legislation introduced by Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, Dan Sullivan of Alaska and Bob Menendez of New Jersey designed to address the plastic debris threatening coastal economies and harming marine life.”
I probably don’t need to clarify that getting anything passed through the Senate in 2020 falls in the near miraculous category…but I will anyway. These are challenging times for finding consensus, and we’re grateful leaders from both sides can see the importance of dealing with ocean plastics for the health of all people and our economy. More of this in 2021, please.
WWF, Ellen MacArthur Foundation, and Boston Consulting Group released “The Business Case for A United Nations Treaty on Plastic Pollution”
You are speaking our love language when you get into the business case for a clean and healthy environment, including the ocean ecosystems. The ocean-originated Blue Economy accounts for $24 trillion in assets that urgently need protection from climate change, acidification, and plastic pollution. Enough said.
ON THE ENTREPRENEUR/STARTUP SIDE OF THIGNS
O’land is an ambitious new company providing state-of-the-art water fill stations for major events and high traffic areas. We love the simplicity of their designs, and how they are meeting consumer need instead of attempting to re-engineer human behavior.
DOWNSTREAM SOLUTIONS – CLEANING UP THE MESS ALREADY MADE
4Ocean hit the 10 million pounds of ocean plastic collected milestone, and has expanded operations into Haiti, Guatemala, and Bali. That’s an incredible amount of work done since the company started making bracelets from ocean trash in Florida in 2017. We love the enthusiasm and pragmatism coming from this team!
Ocean Voyages Institute recovered a record 103 tons of ghost fishing gear and ocean plastic pollution from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch during a 48-day mission this summer. The crew quarantined for three weeks in order to make the voyage safe for all – signaling an incredible willingness to sacrifice personal comfort to achieve a greater goal. We’re definitely grateful for that type of behavior in combatting the ocean plastics crisis.
SEACHANGE – GETTING PLASTIC OFF THE PLANET FOR GOOD
We’ll keep it short and simple by saying this year was a real doozy for our team as individuals, and for a startup nonprofit taking serious swings at a huge problem while the world was [rightfully] focused elsewhere.
We’ll tell you all our stories (the trials and triumphs included) over a beer some time, but we kept pushing right along through all of it for one simple reason: this issue is what keeps us up at night, and working to solve it is the only way we sleep well.
Over and over again - every single day. The deeper we get into the data around the crisis in our oceans, the more fired up we are to get our solution out there providing an end game for plastic and the harm its causing people and our planet.
There is a light on the horizon for addressing our environmental challenges – but SeaChange and organizations like us need your support. Please consider donating $10, $20, $100 – whatever this wild year has left you to spare – so we can get out there and do the real work of getting plastic off the planet.