SC Johnson, Plastic Bank Partner to Fight Ocean Plastic

SEATTLE (Waste 360):  SC Johnson and Plastic Bank launched a global partnership to stop plastic waste from entering the ocean and to fight poverty. The three-year effort creates recycling infrastructure on a massive scale across five countries and pays residents to collect plastic in exchange for digital savings and rewards. Once the plastic is collected and exchanged, it will be recycled into a 100 percent Social Plastic bottle, which SC Johnson will use for its Windex line beginning in February 2020.

"More than 8 million metric tons of plastic leak into the ocean every year, so building infrastructure that stops plastic before it gets into the ocean is key to solving this issue," said Fisk Johnson, chairman and CEO of SC Johnson, in a statement. "I'm particularly pleased that this program we developed with Plastic Bank helps to address poverty and this critical environmental issue at the same time."

SC Johnson and Plastic Bank already have nine collection centers in Indonesia. Under the new three-year agreement, they will expand to 509 total collection centers and points across several countries including Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam—four of the five countries that contribute most to ocean plastic—and Brazil.

Plastic Bank plans to collect 30,000 metric tons of plastic waste over three years. This is the equivalent of stopping approximately 1.5 billion plastic bottles from entering the waterways and oceans, as 100 percent of the plastic will be collected within 30 miles of an ocean or waterway in countries without a formal waste collection infrastructure.

Courtesy: www.waste360.com