All life origins from the sea.

8 million tons more each year – about a truck load per minute is dumped into sea.

The amount of plastic added each year varies from 4.8 to 12.7 million tons depending on the source (Science (347), Plastic waste inputs from land into the ocean, p.769). “This equals one truckload per minute” (“Source”).

To put it another way: 8 million tons correspond to “five shopping bags per 30 centimeters of all worldwide coastlines” (“Source”).

Most of the plastic comes from the poor countries of Asia into the sea.

It is shocking to see that our consumption of plastic on earth continues to increase and that in the future even more plastic will be released into the oceans every year. So we have to find a way to prevent new plastic from entering the oceans by reusing the plastic we produce.

Many people collect worldwide at beaches, coasts, and rivers; privately or in organizations.

The main part of the plastic that ends up in the sea sinks to the ground and makes recovery almost impossible (“Source”).

This means, it must be prevented that the plastic gets into the sea in the first place. Most of the plastic gets into the sea via rivers, coasts and beaches.

The most important thing is to raise awareness and fight poverty in countries where hunger and lack of garbage collection are commonplace. Under these circumstances, probably very few people would bother to dispose of waste in an environmentally sound manner (Maslow Pyramid).

Here with us, the priority should be to reduce the consumption of plastic. Through targeted purchasing behavior everything can change. The economy and production follow the demand. Donations help us to build up waste disposal structures in countries where these are still lacking or insufficient. By collecting plastic, we prevent even more plastic from going into the sea. In the technical jargon this is also called “ocean bound plastic”.

We pay the population suffering from poverty in South East Asia and South America.

Collections are made in the Philippines, Indonesia, Cambodia, Haiti and Brazil. We are constantly expanding our network to achieve even more. To pay these people fairly for good work makes us proud.

Collecting plastic has of course a positive environmental impact. But paying people fairly has a much greater effect in the long run. No matter where the plastic waste originally comes from, it ends up in the sea, mostly in Asia and especially in South East Asia. The local population living there can improve their living situation by collecting the plastic and an awareness is created (preliminary stage of a garbage collection).

The plastic gets assorted and shredded. The raw material is sold to manufacture new products.

The collected plastic is cleaned and sorted in the first step. The sorting of the plastic is essential for the recycling of the material. Plastic can only be reused for new products if it is with its same kind, in order to meet the necessary requirements. The plastic is shredded and can now be used to manufacture new products.

Note: We only participate in feeding the plastic back into the cycle until the collected plastic is returned and the collectors are paid. The reuse of the material is important to us. The processing and selling is a downstream process from Pro Ocean.

Because we care!
We do not shirk our common responsibility towards the ocean.

The ocean is our basis of life, once all life came from the sea. Even today, more than one out of three (“Source”).

We each have personal drives that motivate us every day to improve the situation of the ocean. We all have a close relationship with nature. We are firmly convinced of the ideal that we can live in a harmonious future with our environment.

We propose to clear 38 kgs of plastic, as the average usage of single use plastics by year per person.

Plastic itself is not the problem, but disposable plastic that is disposed of rather than recycled. Plastic, which remains in the cycle for a long time and is constantly undergoing new products and new life cycles, can be an excellent material. Any plastic that is disposed of after only one use in the environment is very problematic for animals, plants and even the climate. This plastic then takes several hundred years to decompose and becomes increasingly dangerous for humans and animals.

According to the “Plastic Atlas”, the annual consumption of disposable plastic is 38 kg per capita in Germany (“Source”).

To achieve “plastic neutrality” for one person, 38 kg to be recovered is a good average (based on linked statistics from Germany).