How This Organisation is Turning the Tide on Ocean Plastic – Broadsheet

Tom Peacock-Nazil was enjoying a weekend holiday on the Thai island of Koh Lipe when the impact of plastic pollution hit him hard. After soaking up the white sands and crystal-clear water of a local beach, he and his wife, Pamela Correia, returned the next morning to find a very different scene.

“There was a substantial storm overnight,” says Peacock-Nazil, “and it was like a blanket of different plastics on the beach, to the point where you could barely walk on it. And there was still a bit in the water, like a large slick floating. It was the first time I ever sat down and really looked at it. It was a moment of clarity and really gave me the kick to do something.”

That something became Seven Clean Seas founded by the husband-and-wife duo in 2018. To date, Seven Clean Seas has pulled more than 850,000 kilograms of plastic pollution out of the ocean, with a target of 10,000,000 kilograms by the end of 2025. And that’s been achieved in a few years, taking into account the pandemic and a gradual operation that began with two ocean clean-up projects in Indonesia and a planned expansion to Thailand. Both rank high among the world’s countries most affected by plastic pollution.

Currently, Seven Clean Seas is venturing into the world of plastic soda bottles, in a new partnership with Lo Bros. Together, the two companies are on a mission to clean up five million plastic bottles by 2025, by removing two plastic bottles for each can of Lo Bros Not Soda purchased.

Peacock-Nazil, who has Malaysian heritage, had lived for years in Singapore and elsewhere in Asia, where plastic pollution is often noticeable. But it wasn’t until that day on Koh Lipe that he and Correia changed their lives to suit this newfound goal. Despite not knowing where to start initially, early inroads into education and volunteer beach clean-ups uncovered that the more remote islands with coastal communities needed the most attention. Securing the funding to set up the necessary infrastructure was the costly first step.

After first drawing on funds from the realms of philanthropy and corporate social responsibility, Seven Clean Seas was contacted by fair-trade German condom company Einhorn, which makes condoms in Malaysia via a natural latex farm. But Einhorn’s products had to be packaged in plastic and they wanted to offset that by funding equivalent clean-ups in order to become “plastic neutral”.

“It was really a lightbulb moment,” says Peacock-Nazil. Seven Clean Seas set about developing a strategy and building the team to undertake a series of clean-ups in Malaysia. After Covid hit, he heard from a contact on Bintan Island in Indonesia, where locals were out of work in tourist destinations due to the pandemic. Seven Clean Seas hired some of those people to work on clean-ups, paying them the same as they had been earning in hospitality. That simple deed spawned photos and videos that stirred up a lot more corporate attention and became what Peacock-Nazil calls a self-fulfilling prophecy. Soon Seven Clean Seas had enlisted an environmental engineer and was scoring contracts with big names like FIFA World Cup to help offset its plastic footprint.

“It’s this really holistic solution, where companies get value from a sustainability perspective and we get the funding to build projects,” says Peacock-Nazil. But that’s just the start: built into every Seven Clean Seas project is a promise to provide workers with both living wages and safe working conditions. The company also offers English lessons to workers so that they can upskill to the tourism sector.

“We’re creating social impact at the same time, and it’s growing and growing,” says Peacock-Nazil. “We’re now employing experts that have helped us build market-leading capabilities across plastic measurement and reduction. We like to think we’re a holistic solution for both upstream reduction and downstream intervention.”

Now based in Bali, Peacock-Nazil and Correia are focused on current clean-up projects in Bintan and the neighbouring island of Batam. The latter has three times as many people as Bintan and a lot of heavy industry, but also 1.4 million hectares of marine-protected area, complete with pink dolphins, dugongs and sea turtles.

The new project is already in the works in Bangkok, along the Chao Phraya River. Peacock-Nazil points out that 70 per cent of plastic pollution travels via river before reaching an ocean. And a different process of catchment and clean-up is required for rivers, so there’s another learning curve ahead. He’s been inspired by the existing efforts of the monks at the riverside Buddhist temple Wat Chak Daeng, who have been collecting and separating plastic locally to then turn into nylon, to be woven into the monks’ distinctive orange robes.

Again, that’s glowing evidence of the holistic approach that Seven Clean Seas has been working towards all along, while establishing approachable inroads to this daunting waste crisis. “It’s a gargantuan environmental issue that is getting exponentially worse,” says Peacock-Nazil. “Seven Clean Seas can’t fix it on our own, but what we are doing is helping to build this industry where organisations all over the world can fund waste management and fix what is an enormous project for humanity.”

*This article is produced by Broadsheet in partnership with Lo Bros and Seven Clean Seas. Lo Bros has partnered with Seven Clean Seas to fund the removal of the equivalent weight of two plastic bottles for every can of Not Soda sold. That means drinking sustainably at every step, from ingredients to environmental footprint. Lo Bros Not Soda is now available to purchase in Ritchies, Drakes and independent supermarkets across Australia. *