With our clean-up program in Demak, our start-up was the first backpack manufacturer in the world to begin actively collecting and processing plastic from the ocean in 2018. Based on our clean-up experiences on the ground and current calculations, we see at least as much leverage against plastic in the sea in preventing improperly disposed plastic waste in the first place.
By giving local people a direct opportunity to recycle and by creating basic waste management structures, we take preventive action against improperly disposed plastic waste threatening the ocean in the long term. This way, we create tangible added value: the beaches become cleaner, the waste becomes a recyclable resource, and the environmental awareness of everyone involved changes for the better. Not least for this reason, we are in close exchange with the local authorities, who support our work and cooperate with us in finding long-term solutions for waste reduction and disposal.
As we continue to expand our production and thus our clean-up program, we are now able to collect even more plastic than just what we can use for our own products - although collection is a very time-consuming and costly process.