WHERE IT STARTED

Turning Plastic into Economic Opportunity

The idea for Ocean Plastic Technologies began with a storm. You see, Oliver Nudds was at a hotel in Indonesia when a downpour battered the coastline. The next morning, the skies had cleared so Oliver went for a walk on the beach and he found chaos.

The shore was buried under a thick layer of plastic waste swept in by the storm and hotel staff were already at work, shovelling bottles and plastic debris into bin bags in an attempt to clean the area before guests arrived. But when Oliver asked where it all went, the answer stunned him. A burn pit. Not only did this add to toxic emissions but with the next heavy rain the burnt plastic would wash back into rivers and out to sea.

It was a cycle with no end.

Standing there, Oliver realised that worldwide the problem with plastic wasn’t just that it was waste. It only became waste because there was no long-term solution to recovering and processing it at the source.

That morning sparked a simple but powerful question: what if plastic could be recycled where it’s found, before it ever re-entered the ocean? Ocean Plastic Technologies was founded to answer that question.