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Spotted:  Australian wine brand, The Hidden Sea, has promised to remove and recycle the equivalent of 100 plastic bottles with each “Plastic Free July” pledge signed on their website. 

By signing the pledge, customers agree to “To avoid buying products wrapped in plastic as much as possible. To reduce the amount of single-use plastic products I use every day. To be more aware of the impact that plastic is making on the health of our oceans and rivers; and to support companies that are working hard to make a quantifiable, tangible positive impact on our environment”.  

For The Hidden Sea, “business as usual” means that with each bottle of wine sold, they remove and recycle 10 plastic bottles from the ocean.  

The intuitive forms part of an ambitious goal set during July 2020 of removing 1 billion plastic bottles from the ocean by 2030. Since then, they have removed over 3 million plastic bottles and during the month of May, alone, The Hidden Sea removed over 1 million plastic bottles from the sea. To be precise, the company removed 1,322,610 single-use plastic bottles from the world’s oceans, equating to 20,044 kilos (or 45,200 pounds). Since July 2020, they have removed over 3 million plastic bottles. 

According to the Hidden Sea, the process is fully verified through their partner project ReSea, an ocean waste collection agency certified independently by third party Det Norske Veritas (DNV GL). This allows them to trace plastic from oceans and rivers all the way back to the location where it was recovered. 

Justin Moran, Hidden Sea co-founder told Springwise that “I was inspired to be part of the solution, not the problem, by my overwhelming belief that we need to protect our planet. It’s not only my belief but it’s backed up by research that our ocean is the sickest part of our planet.” 

For customers, each bottle of The Hidden Sea comes with a custom QR code to transparently track the plastic removed with each purchase. With this, the company hopes to define a new standard for ocean plastic clean-ups.  

According to the company, recycling varied depending on the quality of the plastic collected. On average, 45 per cent of collected plastic goes to fuels, another 45 per cent is recycled and returned to ReSea’s parent company OWP and 10 per cent is said to be so bad that it needs to go into landfill.  

Written By: Katrina Lane

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