A Spark can Start a Fire - method Ocean Plastic bottle

The Problem

By 2050 there will be more plastic in the ocean than fish ….that’s the problem.

Over a decade ago, method co-founder Adam Lowry was walking on a beach in San Francisco and came across a method branded cleaning wipe in amongst the sand. This horrified us all.

We started an internal project to see if we could recover plastic from the ocean and reuse it in our products. We faced a number of hurdles, namely where to get it - we knew that natural collection points occur on certain beaches where plastic washes ashore in huge quantities, and that one of these places was on the big island of Hawaii at a place called Kamilo Beach

The Solution

We organized and partnered with community groups to gather, sort and ship plastic from Hawaii to a plastic compounder. When we had enough, we experimented with processing variables (this stuff is dirty and smelly) and managed to create a blend of HPDE with between 5-10% plastic sourced of the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch”, and the balance from curbside recycled milk jugs.

Processing this dark grey plastic was difficult, and as we only had a few tons to use, we wanted to create an iconic bottle and settled on a limited edition to bring attention to the growing issue of plastic ending up in our waterways and oceans, fish, wildlife and ultimately us. The design approach I adopted was to re-conceive the iconic method teardrop as an ocean creature, reminiscent of sand dollar or a urchin that you might find whilst beach-combing.

The product launched in Wholefoods and is one of my favorites. It’s also the world’s first bottle made with plastic recovered from the ocean.

method was on the forefront of bringing attention to this issue, and from small things we have seen huge attention, and growing action on tackling this issue. There are now commercial grades of both PET and HDPE available from ocean bound plastic, and many large CPGs have a ocean or social plastic program. A spark can start a fire…