Company: Ocean Bottle
Founders: Nick Doman and Will Pearson
Website: https://oceanbottle.co
About Ocean Bottle
We met at business school 5 years ago, and were connected by a desire to do business differently, having witnessed the scale of plastic pollution first-hand. Whilst consumer awareness was increasing, many people felt helpless and disconnected from the solutions.
Having seen a real need for waste management infrastructure in coastal communities in the global south, we wanted to connect the dots. We developed Ocean Bottle on the following principles: 1) empowering people to reduce their own footprint and raise awareness by being part of a global solution 2) collecting plastic before it enters the ocean where it matters most 3) creating employment opportunities and protecting marginalised communities. Our hope is to inspire the Patagonia of tomorrow, where business as usual becomes giving a minimum of 15% of revenue to impact.
Ocean Bottle was founded in 2018 with one product – the world’s most-needed reusable bottle. Since then, our range has expanded to four products across six core colours, alongside accessories such as lids and carry loops.
Every bottle funds the collection of 11.4 kg of ocean-bound plastic, equivalent to 1000 plastic bottles in weight. Our products are smart-chip activated via an NFC chip built into the base, enabling users to make a continuous impact by connecting to our app. In Beta phase, the app was built to inspire behavioural change, and we fund collection equivalent to 5 plastic bottles for every refill logged. We currently have around 4,000 monthly refills.
Behind everything we do sits our traceability ledger, allocating funding from our customers to our impact partners. Through these partners, we support coastal communities across India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Kenya, Ghana, Egypt and Brazil to formalise waste management, enabling access to social co-benefits including financial security, healthcare, and education.
To date, we’ve stopped over 9.1 million kg of plastic from entering the ocean, while supporting the livelihoods of thousands across the globe. We have also supported the building of three new recycling centres in India through our partner, Plastics For Change.
For 2023 and beyond, our aim is to go beyond the bottle in order to achieve our mission of stopping 7 billion plastic bottles in weight from entering the ocean by 2025 – which is equivalent in weight to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. To do this, we are leveraging technology to scale our impact and connect organisations and individuals to our solution. This quarter, we will publicly be launching Ocean Co. – a platform proposition that lets other brands tap into our impact model and increase our collective impact exponentially. Together, we can restore the ocean to a better state than it’s ever been.
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