Sustainable cleaning products brand Ecover will launch a washing-up liquid bottle made partly from reclaimed ocean plastic later this month, as its special edition ‘Ocean Bottle’ hits UK stores.

Developed as part of the company’s drive to increase public awareness of the problem of plastic polluting the seas, up to 10 per cent of the Ocean Bottle has been made with plastic recovered from the sea, with the remainder comprising both post-consumer rHDPE (recycled high-density polyethylene), and Ecover's ‘Plant-astic’ (plastic sourced from sugarcane). While the company website says this is ‘the first ever bottle made from waste plastic fished out of the ocean’, cleaning product company Method, which is now fully owned by Ecover, launched a packaging line made partly from ocean plastics for the US market in 2012.

The new form of plastic for Ecover’s bottles was developed by plastic manufacturer Closed Loop Recycling (Closed Loop), while packaging firm Logoplaste manufactured the bottles.

Ecover has said that the Ocean Bottle ‘represents a big step both in raising awareness of ocean plastic and also beginning the process of prevention and a much-needed clean-up in our oceans across the world’.

Indeed, according to the Marine Conservation Society, plastic debris accounts for almost 60 per cent of all litter found on UK beaches, with much of it ending up in the sea, while figures from the European Commission suggest that up to 10 million tonnes of litter, mostly plastic, end up in the world's oceans and seas annually.

The cleaning products company added that it will be using one tonne of ocean plastic in its packaging this year, rising to three tonnes in 2015.

Aiming to 'clean up ocean plastic for good'

Philip Malmberg, CEO of Ecover, said: “The scale of the ocean plastic problem is enormous – around 46,000 pieces of plastic are swirling around every square mile of ocean, and every year at least a million sea birds and 100,000 sharks, turtles, dolphins and whales die from eating plastic. There is no choice – we simply have to aim to clean up ocean plastic for good.

“Our ocean plastic bottle is just one small step on the way to solving the problem, but you’ve got to start somewhere – what we need now is to create a wider network of fishermen, recycling facilities and manufacturers to really make this happen. We also have to exploit existing supply chains and make it as easy as possible for manufacturers to use ocean plastic. At the moment the will is there but it’s just too much effort for many manufacturers to make it work.”

Tom Domen, Ecover’s Long Term Innovation Manager, added: “We need to rethink recycling and get serious about creating a real circular economy. We have to clean up the plastic in the oceans and stop any more from getting in there in the first place. Everyone, from governments to the fishing industry to supermarket shoppers, has a role to play in making this happen.”

He added: “We’re beyond the point where we want our packaging to be ‘less bad’; we want it to be positively good for the world. I’d love to think that people will refill this bottle time after time, and find other uses for it after it’s helped with the washing up – we don’t want the bottle to go to waste at all.”

Available exclusively at supermarket chain Tesco, the washing-up liquid itself has been developed with a special ‘sea lavender and eucalyptus’ fragrance – to ‘bring the scent of the sea to homes across the UK’.

Waste Free Oceans

The Ocean Bottle supports the work of the Waste Free Oceans (WFO) project, which seeks to reduce the amount of floating debris around Europe’s coastlines and highlights the important nature of recycling and reusing. The campaign has the backing of several MEPs including Danish MEP Anna Rosbach, Chairwoman of the WFO Foundation.

Set up by industry group European Plastics Converters, the WFO initiative describes itself as ‘an industry-led initiative with the aim of reducing floating marine debris on coastlines by 2020’. It utilises boats equipped with a special trawl that will allow them to collect between two and eight tonnes of waste for cleaning and recycling per trawl. Similar actions have been started in Belgium, Spain, Germany, Greece and Austria.

Commenting on the WFO scheme, CEO of Closed Loop Chris Dow said: “The Waste Free Oceans initiative is not simply about cleaning up our oceans of unwanted litter, which is of course important in itself environmentally. It’s about the industry taking responsibility for plastic litter and educating people to take responsibility for their own waste and recycle as much of it as possible, in the knowledge that recyclers like us can maximise this resource and enable it to [be] reused in new food and drink packaging, thus reducing our reliance on oil-rich virgin materials.”

Read more about the impacts of plastic on our oceans in Resource 70or watch a video about Ecover’s Ocean Bottle.