We recovered our first 1.000.000 kg of plastic from the ocean!

In this week's episode of Suits & Tides, the business newsletter with more knowledge than microplastics in the ocean, we take a look at our journey from zero to one million kilos recovered, how our company evolved and the exciting growth trajectory which shows us how our we are getting closer and closer to our goal of 10.000.000 kg by 2025!

We did it! As of 28 February 2023, we have officially collected over 1,000,000 kilograms of plastic pollution through our plastic impact projects.

Can you believe it? 1,000,000 kilograms of plastic waste… picture it. Well, it is difficult to fathom. Think about it like this: It's approximately the weight of 1 million 1kg bags of sugar, half of the weight of 2,000,000 kg or one giant 1 million kilogram bag of sugar. That's crazy!

If you’re a marine lover, it’s pretty much the weight of almost 40 adult humpback whales. If you’re more of a city person and never seen a whale, imagine 83 London double decker buses - quite a traffic jam.

Okay, okay, jokes aside, it is hard to understand or even visualise the scale of the plastic we have collected. It is even harder to understand how we even got here and how much blood, sweat and tears have gone into reaching this milestone. So sometimes, you have to look backwards to see how far you have come, so we are going to share each milestone leading us back to this point.?

9 Kilogram: Day 1

Let's take a trip back in time to 23 July 2018 - the day that started it all. It was a beautiful day in Singapore when our founders, Tom and Pam Peacock-Nazil, were down at a beach. As they looked around, they were struck with the amount of plastic waste that litters the coastline. So they rolled up their sleeves, picked up one plastic at a time and eventually collected 9 kilograms of plastic waste.

Proud of their hard work, they decided to take their mission to a whole new level. And that's how Seven Clean Seas was born. They proudly claim their 9 kilograms of plastic as the inspiration behind it all, setting a journey in the fight against plastic pollution.

It wasn't much, but it was a foundation for a movement that spread awareness of the plastic problem. From here, they leveraged the power of word art and Facebook events to spread the word about Seven Clean Seas and its mission to remove plastic from the ocean.

24,000 Kilograms: You can't stop us

Nearly a year later, precisely 27 June 2019, we are blue and proud!

Seven Clean Seas has transformed into an impactful grassroots community. Conducting weekly beach cleanups, we educated residents and organisations in Singapore about the challenges of plastic pollution in the APAC region. Our activities were primarily based in Singapore, as it is a leading economy in a region disproportionately affected by plastic pollution. By raising awareness of plastic pollution and promoting social responsibility, we are able to make a difference in the fight against plastic waste.

55,000 Kilograms: The target was set, and the crew were ready

The journey of Seven Clean Seas reached a turning point on 23 August 2020. It was the day we realised how much potential we have and the difference we could make in the fight against plastic pollution through plastic offsetting. So we took a leap of faith and formally employed furloughed workers during the Covid-19 pandemic to collect plastic waste from a marine protected area in Bintan, Indonesia.?

From then on, we knew we had to dream big. So we set ourselves an ambitious (okay, some might say crazy!) of removing 10,000,000 kilograms of plastic from the ocean.

100,000 Kilograms: Okay this is working, but the blue isn't.

On 12 February 2021, we finally recovered over 100,000kg of plastic from our oceans! It was a proud moment, but we were not resting on our laurels. On the contrary, we are committed to keeping the momentum and pushing forward to rid our oceans of plastic.

When we first started, blue was our obvious choice for branding. After all, our ultimate goal is to turn our oceans back to their natural blue state by removing plastic waste. But we couldn't shake the feeling that something was off. Blue didn't capture our company's spirit and our innovative approach to plastic collection and management.

That's when we decided to make the bold move of switching our branding to yellow! Yellow is vibrant, bold, and different - just like how we're building a better future for our oceans. We're shaking things up differently, and our branding reflects that.

Reaching the 100,000kg milestone is a testament to our commitment and hard work. We're here to stay, and we're growing faster than ever before. With the recent addition of a general manager for Indonesia, a communications whizz, and a technical guru to our team, we're poised to make an even greater impact in the fight against ocean plastic.

250,000 Kilograms: Two teams are better than one!

On 21 November 2021, we hit another milestone of a quarter of a million kilos of plastic! As the year's end approached, we focused on creating a strong foundation for our work. Our two full-time collection crews were out on the coastlines and coastal communities every day for five days a week, collecting huge amounts of plastic.

Of course, we don't want to stop there! We wanted to ensure that our plastic collection projects were traceable and reliable, so we worked hard to achieve our Ocean Bound Plastic certification. This was a huge accomplishment for us and a testament to our commitment to doing things right every step of the way.

As our project grew and developed, we were still painting our Material Recovery Facility (or, you can call it, MRF) yellow. With each passing day, we're recovering even more plastic from the environment, leaving a positive impact on the planet. Still, our sight was on hitting the ultimate goal of collecting 10 million kilos of plastic waste from our environment.

500,000 Kilograms: More yellow, bigger teams, MORE PLASTIC COLLECTED.?

It was the 27 July 2022, or what we'd like to call the summer of sorting. When we announced this milestone, we were beyond ecstatic. It was, yet again, a monumental achievement that took tremendous hard work and dedication from our full-time team.

We knew we had to make a difference - we needed to scale our operations and take a step further in our plastic collection process. With bigger teams in place, we were able to do just that. What's more, our yellow and vibrant Material Recovery Facility is now running at full speed, allowing us to sort, separate and bail materials thoroughly as we scale up our team. It is a crucial step in our process, making it possible for further processing, with the ultimate goal of circulating plastic back into the system.

1,000,000 Kilograms: 1 million down, many more to go!

From one milestone to another, we finally made it! We have officially collected over one million kilos of plastic from the ocean. Our team has grown to 67 crew members with the same passion and vision for making our planet plastic-less, one plastic at a time. Starting in Bintan, we have expanded to Batam, increasing our impact exponentially to protect our oceans and the creatures that call it home.

It all started with just 9 kilograms and a dream. Looking back, we couldn't be any more proud to have made a splash in the fight against ocean pollution. We know that every kilo of plastic we remove from the ocean makes a difference, and we couldn't have done it without everyone in our team, our partners, our stakeholders and our volunteers—so HUGE thanks to all of you who have helped along the way.

But we are not done yet! Our mission is far from over, and we will only stop once our oceans are restored. Together, we're setting our sights on the next million kilos of plastic. So let's raise our anchors and keep sailing towards a cleaner future together!

Thank you for reading our story! Thank you for reading our second episode of Suits & Tides! Hit the button subscribe to be notified about the next episode, leave your comments & thoughts and help us spread the world about plastic pollution! Discover more about Seven Clean Seas here.