Covering approximately 71% of the earth’s surface area and providing the fundamental building blocks to generate life some 3.7 billion years ago, water is one of our planet’s core natural resources. However, careless actions have lead to overfishing and pollution of these beautiful waters. 4Oceans was created to push for cleaner water and cleaner habits.
4Ocean was established in 2017 by Co-Founders Alex Schulze and Andrew Cooper on a trip the pair took to Bali, Indonesia. Upon arriving on the garbage-filled shoreline of one of the beaches and inquiring about the problem to a local, they were informed that this is a result of all the waste that washes up regularly from the ocean. Alex and Andrew knew that they had to act quickly against this ocean plastic crisis, and hired local workers and boat captains to clean up the coastlines of Bali full time. Nonetheless, it quickly became apparent that a unique business model was needed so the workers could be paid, the cleanups could be funded and the word could be spread globally.
image source: https://www.4ocean.com/pages/about
Thus, 4Ocean began creating products out of the recycled material filtered from their ocean clean-up initiatives. The most popular product is the 4Ocean beaded bracelet that projected this company into the public eye. This bracelet, when purchased, is a pledge from 4Ocean to pull one pound of trash from the oceans; the beads are created from recycled waste found in the waters and a variety of different bracelet styles coincide with the various species assisted by that particular donation.
image source: www.4Ocean.com
The 4Ocean team has done an outstanding job with collecting almost 10 million pounds of trash in their 4 years of operation, and global initiatives spanning from the United States to Haiti and Guatemala amongst many. 4Ocean is not merely an ocean cleaning effort, but rather a revolution on the concept of “reusing”, finding beauty and purpose in rectifying bad habits and educating on eco-friendly habits.
If you would like to support 4Oceans by purchasing a bracelet, click here
For tips on how to run your own beach clean-up (while practicing social distancing), click here