Green Chemistry Company Turns Ocean Trash into Plastic Bottles

Often referred to as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, the North Pacific Gyre could be twice the size of Texas and contains about 3.5 million tons of trash – it’s called the world’s largest landfill.

Much of the trash is plastic that’s broken down into suspended particulates, a testament to humanity’s reliance on petroleum and our failure to dispose of products made from it properly. For years it was believed the trash was unredeemable.

Not any longer. A California-based green household and personal products company called Method has figured out a way to use plastic from the Gyre in the production of 100% post-consumer polyethylene bottles. 25% of the plastic used in the bottles is recovered from the Gyre.

Founded in 2000, Method made its first bottle entirely from post-consumer recycled plastic in 2006, and since then has manufactured tens of millions of plastic bottles a year that are completely free from virgin plastic.

Now, teaming with Envision Plastics, one of the largest recyclers in the US, Method has developed a recycling process to engineer a new plastic material it calls Ocean PCR that is the same quality as virgin HDPE plastic.

Method is currently collecting enough usable ocean plastic to create a significant supply and turn it into bottles. The company plans to take the bottle to market early next year with a major, as yet unnamed, retailer.

Announcing the innovation, Adam Lowry, Method co-founder, said, "We’ve created a usable bottle from ocean plastic and upcycled it into something useful that can be recycled again and again. Our ultimate goal is to raise awareness that the real solution to plastic pollution lies in reusing and recycling the plastic that’s already on the planet."

Method’s founders just published a book, "The Method Method," which tells the story of their company.