Research on the topic of ocean plastic is only in its infancy – and in parallel, our work and the technical progress of production are steadily advancing. The structure of our clean-up program is also based on scientific findings, such as those of oceanologist Erik Van Sebille, who documents movements of ocean plastic over a longer period of time. Among other things, he shows that it moves near the coast, circulates from beach to beach and from mangrove to mangrove, and equally threatens the ocean at these different stages: http://erik.vansebille.com.
We consider it difficult to make general assumptions about the profitability of recycled plastic, as both the scientific community and organizations working in this field are still in the early stages of developing their findings and their work. Also in our case, much depends on local conditions and fluctuating influencing factors such as weather, time of year, and the social situation. Based on experience, we would agree insofar as it is likely to be challenging for large-scale productions requiring consistent quality to supply the value chain purely with ocean plastic.
In processing the Ocean Impact Plastic, we therefore calculate that the quality of the yarn will fluctuate resulting in a greater failure rate. We deliberately avoid using additives such as new plastics or chemical additives to alter the mechanical qualities of the recycled plastic. Instead, the plastic is cleaned particularly thoroughly, pre-sorted and process parameters are continuously optimized so that the quality of the yarn remains as constant as possible. Nevertheless, it can obviously not be completely prevented that the textile for our products differs slightly and that material structure shows small defects.