Plastic Bank has its sights trained on collecting the next billion plastic bottles

Travel Retail Sustainability Week partner Plastic Bank has reached a notable milestone after preventing one billion plastic bottles from entering the globe’s oceans.

The social enterprise, whose Founder and CEO David Katz is set to deliver the keynote address at Travel Retail Sustainability Week (19-23 April), builds ethical recycling ecosystems in vulnerable coastal communities while tackling poverty by empowering those who collect plastic waste.

One billion plastic bottles equates to more than 20 million kilograms of plastic that would have otherwise blighted oceans.

To achieve the goal, Plastic Bank worked in partnership with more than 17,000 individual collectors across Haiti, the Philippines, Indonesia, Brazil and Egypt.

David Katz, Founder & CEO, Plastic Bank.

REGENERATIVE PLASTICS ECONOMY

Collectors receive premiums in exchange for the plastic they collect that in turn helps to provide basic family necessities such as groceries, cooking fuel, school tuition and health insurance.

Using Plastic Bank’s closed-loop recycling system, collected plastic is reborn as ethically recovered ‘Social Plastic’ that can be reintroduced into global manufacturing supply chains to create new products and materials.

Currently, Plastic Bank has more than 320 active collection branches across Haiti, the Philippines, Indonesia, Brazil and Egypt and plans to expand into Cameroon and Thailand in 2021.

The social enterprise has global partnerships with the likes of SC Johnson, Henkel, Procter & Gamble, Coca-Cola, Coty, HelloFresh, Lombard Odier, Advansa, Carton Pack, Grove Collaborative, Ocean Bottle and others.

For more on Travel Retail Sustainability Week, the DF&TR industry’s first virtual event dedicated solely to sustainability, click here.