Tue, Dec. 16: A BC company has come up with a program that both keeps plastic out of the oceans, and helps those in need. Elaine Yong tells us how the ‘Plastic Bank’ works.
A new program hopes to work with businesses to clean up shorelines in B.C. and across the world.
The Plastic Bank is a Vancouver-based organization that takes discarded plastic from local and international shores and monetizes it. They worked with Lush on a pilot project to have the cosmetics retailer be the first company to use so-called “social plastic.”
The company has a line of products that use post-consumer recycled material, some of it plastic garbage collected from beaches in B.C. and Alaska.
The Vancouver entrepreneur who came up with the concept says there is no shortage of raw material clogging up our oceans.
“All the plastic that’s ever been produced is still sitting on the face of the earth,” says David Katz of the Plastic Bank. Between 4 to 8 trillion pounds of plastic still on the earth. A little of it was incinerated for energy but the rest of it is still out there.”
The Plastic Bank just opened its first collection centre in Peru. Workers are paid to pick up plastic and given a fair wage for the raw materials they collect. The Plastic Bank then sells the cleaned and sorted plastic to manufacturers. The organization hopes to expand to other developing countries such as Haiti.
“The great opportunity for people living in disadvantage is that in their environment there is an abundance of a petroleum resource, and we monetize it because pound for pound it’s worth more than steel.”
-with files from Elaine Yong
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