Feature Photo by Brian Yurasits on Unsplash
The Ocean Bottle company was described by The Guardian as “Hydration with a Heart” because their Ocean Bottle is not only the ultimate in the latest innovative sustainable technology, the company is also a Certified B Corp that helps over 4300 plastic collectors live and work in places where plastic pollution is the most severe, such as Haiti, the Philippines, Indonesia and Brazil.
the ocean bottle: available at green pear eco
The Ocean Bottle is BPA free and made from biomaterials; it’s part ocean-bound recycled plastic bottle and part insulating stainless steel, so the contents of the bottle will stay hot for 9+ hours and cool for a cool 18+ hours. It’s durable and fully recyclable, dishwasher safe with a small opening for drinking and a large opening for easy cleaning and is designed with a 180- degree, anti-leak twist cap and a carry loop.
The Ocean Bottle is available in a variety of cool ocean-inspired colours, but what’s totally awesome is that there really is a message in this bottle, as it helps turn the tap OFF on ocean plastic and it’s available to buy online at Green Pear Eco.
- Earn 80 Pear Points with this product through Green Pear Eco’s reward scheme 🍐
- As well as earning points, Green Pear Eco are also offering 5% off every order over £10 for Suzstainable readers with the discount code SUZ-GPE-5
green pear eco
Inspired by David Attenborough and the low-waste/climate-strike movement, Green Pear Eco endeavours to be as close to low waste as possible or at the very least, 100% recyclable/plastic-free. Green Pear Eco is an online marketplace for eco-friendly products, with the aim of making eco-friendly products more accessible for everyone and to convert the more ‘hard to sway’ people away from plastic. From bottles to bars, from single use to reusable.
Green Pear Eco aims to become a ‘one-stop-shop’ with a wide range of products to help everyone make swaps away from plastic throughout their homes. They have partnered with TreeApp to plant a tree for every order of £10 and over, as they don’t only want to help reduce plastic consumption, they also want to help reduce climate change, reforest and cool the Earth. TreeApp work with NGOs One Tree Planted and Eden Reforestation Projects to plant trees all over the world.
Like William Pearson, the co-founder of Ocean Bottle, Green Pear Eco founders Dan and Gabs were also horrified by the plastic waste they saw whilst travelling (in Asia):
“Beautiful countries with amazing people were being destroyed by human consumerism and wasteful ways. Beaches were covered in rubbish, sea animals being washed up dead through ingesting plastic. Whole landscapes were changing on a mass scale which was really hard to see.“
Plastic is polluting our oceans at an astounding rate. 22 million kgs of plastic enters our oceans every day, and this number is increasing. According to a Sustainable Development Factsheet more than 8 million tonnes of plastic enter our oceans each year and the impact of plastic is becoming catastrophic; 100,000 marine mammals and turtles and 1 million seabirds are killed by plastic pollution annually. Some estimates predict that by 2050 oceans will carry more plastic mass than fish, and an estimated 99 per cent of seabirds will have ingested plastic. Every year around the world we create more than 300 million tonnes of plastic – and half of this is single-use. One of the worst offenders are plastic bottles, with a million of them sold every minute around the world, a figure that’s already expected to increase by 20% this year.
Social Plastic®
Up to 80% of the world’s ocean plastic comes from lack of waste management infrastructure in coastal communities around the world. Ocean Bottle has a No Bullshit Philosophy on sustainability, which means that for each sale, the Ocean Bottle will fund the collection of 11.4 kg/25lbs of ocean-bound plastic, which equates to over 1000 plastic bottles in weight, essentially a small sedan full of single-use plastic. Working with their Norwegian ethical recycling partners The Plastic Bank, the plastic waste is reintroduction into the global manufacturing supply chain as Social Plastic® which is reintegrated into products and packaging. This creates a closed-loop supply chain while helping those who collect it and giving collectors a path out of poverty.
Ocean Bottle don’t donate a percentage of their profits to different causes, instead they prefer to have a defined and transparent impact through funding plastic collectors in impoverished regions to collect plastic before it enters our oceans, and by contributing to the development of long-term recycling infrastructure. All funds for plastic collectors are transferred via a transparent IBM blockchain platform operated by The Plastic Bank.
“Not only does the IBM platform offer transparency, but the model creates a system of economic incentives around plastic, turning plastic into a currency that can be exchanged for food, medical insurance, off-grid solar and even micro-finance. Instead of pure donations, our aim is to create a sustainable economy around recycling where it’s needed most.
With the Ocean Bottle, we promise to always hold true to our commitments and will strive to become the model for the next generation of no-bullshit sustainability.”
Mauricio Coindreau, Co-Founder at The Ocean Bottle
The majority of plastic collectors do not have protection from governments or municipal authorities and Ocean Bottle make it their duty to ensure they receive a fair income for their work which is why they work with Plastic Bank & IBM blockchain technology to formalise an often informal and unfair waste sector.
Co-founder William Pearson has found creating the Ocean Bottle to ensure it feels and looks good no easy feat, however Ocean Bottle believe they’ve created the most sustainably minded reusable bottle out there.
Since launching in January 2019 Ocean Bottle has shipped nearly 100k units out into the world, collected 1,026,940kgs of plastic and improved livelihoods at the same time.
Their goal is to fund collection equivalent to 7 billion plastic bottles from entering the ocean by 2025.
What was important to Ocean Bottle, was creating a bottle that will last a lifetime, is easily recyclable and never compromises on impact. Investment in programs that replace the resources they have spent is also a priority, which is where offsets come in. Each Ocean Bottle offsets up to 18kg of CO2 from recycling and reusing all the plastic that is collected. Partnering with C-Level enables Ocean Bottle to offset their travel footprint and across other parts of the business.
refilling
The main feature that makes me love the Ocean Bottle is that it’s fitted with a NFC enabled smart chip in the upcycled ocean-plastic in the base of the bottle, and Ocean Bottle are busy working on partnerships with refill stations and cafes to be able to donate to Ocean Bottle for free when you refill!
In the meantime, there are other water refill organisations around the globe, such as Refill and Refill My Bottle where you can fill up your water bottle for free or a minimum fee.
Refill My Bottle is a community of responsible travellers, conscious locals and mindful business owners who also take action against plastic waste. Their goal is to reduce the number of single-use plastic bottles used unnecessarily throughout the world.
Since the initial conception in Bali, RefillMyBottle has grown significantly and now over 4,000 businesses in Indonesia, Southeast Asia and around the world have become refill stations, offering conscious travellers an alternative to buying single-use plastic bottles.
Accessed through the mobile app, the RefillMyBottle map shows you nearby locations where refillers can walk in and fill up their bottle with clean drinkable water for free or a minimum fee. Look for RefillMyBottle stickers in the windows of shops, cafes, galleries, museums and other businesses!
Refill also has a free app that taps into a global network of places to reduce, reuse and refill, with more than 30,000 places offering free drinking water globally and over 300,000 app downloads.
Refill puts the power to reduce plastic at your fingertips; their campaign has already avoided over 100 million pieces of single-use plastic at source and is making ‘reduce, reuse, refill and repeat’ the new social norm.
green pear eco's "on the go" range
In addition to our plastic bottle waste, today’s ‘lunch on the go’ habits generate 11 billion items of packaging waste a year, just in the UK. We get through a whopping 2.5 billion coffee cups each year – that’s enough to stretch around the world roughly five and a half times! One way to avoid this added waste is to shop from a range of “On the Go” products at Green Pear Eco, the “Plastic Free Shop”:
Green Pear Eco’s 3 Pack Reusable Produce Bags and Bread Bag are a fantastic way to switch away from plastic bags for fresh produce in the supermarket, or can be used to wrap your lunch. Made from GOTS certified organic cotton, they’re machine washable, breathable and can be put directly in the fridge which prolongs the life of your fruit and veg too!
- Earn 2 Pear Points and get 10% off your next order with Green Pear Eco’s Referral and Reward Scheme🍐
Plastic straws are now banned in England so this 5 pack steel drinking straws in a handy carry pouch and vegan straw cleaner are prefect for on-the-go lunches.
- Earn 14 Pear Points with this product through Green Pear Eco’s reward scheme 🍐
These reusable glass coffee cups from Green Pear Eco’s On the Go have a capacity of 12oz (340ml), which is the perfect size for your on-the-go lifestyle or commute to work and is the best alternative material to disposable coffee cups*.
They are hand blown from the highest quality borosilicate glass and are completely plastic free and fully recyclable, featuring a unique textured anti-slip grip thermal sleeve and ergonomically designed splash proof lid made from fully recyclable silicone, which means you can enjoy your coffee on-the-go and save money. Big coffee brands will give you discount if you bring your own cup, for example Starbucks & Costa will discount 25p discount when you take your own cup, Pret A Manger will give a 50p discount and Caffe Nero will give 2 stamps per coffee on their loyalty card or via their app.
- Earn 26 Pear Points with this product through Green Pear Eco’s reward scheme 🍐
- As well as earning points, Green Pear Eco are also offering 5% off every order over £10 for Suzstainable readers with the discount code SUZ-GPE-5
As Anne Marie Bonneau perfectly said:
“We don’t need a handful of people doing zero waste perfectly. We need millions of people doing it imperfectly.”
This Earth Day Be the change.