The importance of cleaning up our oceans has become a front-and-center issue, as it should be. From a 19-year-old’s creation of an ocean clean-up array meant to clean up the ‘Great Pacific Garbage Patch’ to the development of eco-friendly plastic alternatives, we’re all doing our best to save one of the most precious resources we have on this planet. In addition to the plastic trash, drift nets are cluttering the homes of countless marine animals. So now companies are working to help this problem.
Scientists predict that all of our coral reef systems will be gone by 2025 if we don’t do something drastic to clean up our oceans. Captain Paul Watson brought the problem of drift nets in our oceans to the attention of Cyrill Gutsch, an award-winning designer.
Gutsch is the founder of a company known as Parley, “a collaboration space where creators, thinkers and leaders from art, film, music, fashion, technology and science partner up with major brands and environmentalists to raise awareness and to collaborate on projects that can end the destruction of the magic blue universe beneath us: Our Oceans.”
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The famous sneaker maker, Adidas, has now partnered with Parley for a collaboration to take ocean waste and transform it into clothing and sneakers.
“Adidas created a world first with a shoe upper made entirely of yarns and filaments reclaimed and recycled from ocean waste and illegal deep-sea gillnets.”
Parley worked with an organization called Sea Shepherd to retrieve the nets after a 110-day expedition tracking an illegal poaching vessel, which culminated off the coast of West Africa.
The nets became the upper portion of the shoe, made entirely of yarns and filaments of that reclaimed ocean ‘trash.’
Though we still need to refrain from using plastic bottles, limit our eating of seafood, and stop littering with plastic bags and other plastic products, this is a great step toward making our oceans hospitable to marine life again.
Featured image sourced from: Forbes