|
PLASTIC
RECOVERY VESSEL - Potentially a great idea, but would be better solar
powered instead of using bunker loads of marine
diesel to collect plastic, that is itself a petroleum
product. Perhaps they might get a system working and then convert the
vessel to solar power. A purpose designed system something like SeaVax
might be even better.
PICANTE TODAY NOVEMBER 12 2018
Ocean cleanup company to remove millions upon millions of pounds of plastic and trash with new, specially outfitted vessel
4ocean (www.4ocean.com), an ocean cleanup company headquartered in Boca Raton, Florida, will unveil their new Ocean Plastic Recovery Vessel, a 135-foot vessel outfitted with
48,000 gallon fuel
tanks, 30,000 gallon water tanks and 14 cabins. The OPR Vessel will assist in the gathering of plastic and trash at domestic and international locations by targeting local and land-based coastline issues and tackling coastline plastics, containing them, collecting them, and reclaiming large-scale debris fields in the waterways.
The 4ocean OPR Vessel contains an excavator barge, marsh excavator, fast landing craft and collection booms. The collection booms can be laid out in a petal fashion to reach a larger coverage area while having access to the beach.
The design will bring the floating debris including plastic and trash to the beach for collection by the 4ocean team. The marsh excavator is a custom-built combination of a long reach excavator and a set of swamp tracks to work on soft soil in order to remove and separate plastics from mud.
River mouths are oftentimes in under-developed low-income areas. Therefore, the logistics of trying to maneuver large equipment complicates the cleanup process. Small panga vessels can clean-up plastic and bring it to recycling facilities. These pangas can hold four to five supersacks carrying 1,500 pounds while the larger Ocean Plastic Recover Vessel can bring in 310,000 pounds in one trip alone.
“The 4ocean OPR Vessel will transport massive amounts of plastic coupled with large booms to assist in the installation in all impactful river mouths,” said 4ocean co-founder Alex Schulze. “Our mission with the OPR Vessel is to attack shoreline plastic simultaneously while booms are collecting plastic debris. At the same time, we will be handling reclamation projects in large geographic square areas to clean up the oceans and river deltas in order to make those areas functionable, usable and sustainable.”
“Our new vessel has the ability to respond to any emergency situation to recover plastic including heavy rains and floods that frequently cause mass amounts of plastic to head offshore,” stresses 4ocean co-founder Andrew Cooper.
4ocean will have four panga vessels, each 22 feet long. These smaller boats will be primarily used for cleanups in the
Caribbean and Central America due to their ability to operate in high seas using a low horsepower motor. They are longer and more slender vessels and use
less
fuel. Panga vessels float shallow and are faster and more efficient for 4ocean crews to collect plastic from oceans and waterways.
“Our new Bobcat excavator uses a custom claw and hook on the front with teeth to leave behind dirt and only grab plastic,” notes Schulze. “Being that there is so much plastic in these impacted river mouth areas, our job is to collect as much plastic as possible, clean up these areas, install booms and employ locals to service and maintain the booms long-term.”
4ocean’s efforts are completely funded through the sale of recycled bracelets and sustainability products.
With efforts well-established in South Florida since January 2017, Bali, Indonesia since May 2018 and Port-au-Prince, Haiti since September 2018, 4ocean plans to expand their ocean cleanups farther across the globe with the Ocean Plastic Recovery Vessel.
Since its founding in January 2017, 4ocean has pulled over 2 million pounds of plastic and trash from the ocean and coastlines.
4ocean (www.4ocean.com) is a sustainability brand started by two twenty-something surfers, Alex Schulze and Andrew Cooper, with a vision of cleaning the ocean and coastlines, one pound at a time. Global cleanups are funded entirely through the sale of sustainability products, where every item purchased funds the removal of at least one pound of trash from the ocean. By creating jobs, utilizing the latest technology and raising awareness about the impact of trash in the ocean, the company is building the first economy for ocean plastic and creating a cleaner, more sustainable future for the ocean.
By Vlad Poptamas
WLRN SOUTH FLORIDA JANUARY 3 2019
- This South Florida Company Wants To Clean The Seas - And Prove It Can Make Money Doing It
Andrew Cooper and
Alex
Schulze, two millenials and keen surfers, celebrated their graduation from Florida Atlantic University business school with a holiday in Bali in 2015. They were horrified by the amount of plastic washing up on the beaches and decided to do something about it, putting their brand new business degrees to work.
The result is 4ocean, a cleanup company that, in less than two years, has cleaned up over two million pounds of plastics from coastlines around the globe.
4ocean is positioning ocean plastic as an opportunity, employing locals and paying the at first disbelieving fisherman to collect plastic rather than only catching fish. “Unemployment rates are very high in these different areas. It’s something the fishermen then take pride in doing,” says Alex Schulze.
Headquartered in Boca Raton, 4ocean is funded entirely from selling $20 bracelets made from recycled
glass. For each bracelet sold, they promise to remove one pound of plastic.
“When you look at a non-profit, or charity, we really didn’t want to go that route and ask with our hand out, rather create a product and a business solution so this can be around long after we are gone,” says Schulze.
Their business model of operating solely from selling their bracelets has been a remarkable success. 4ocean now has a presence in 27 countries, with over 200 employees, and crews working in the ocean 7 days a week. Schulze and Cooper have over a million of followers on Instagram and another million on Facebook. The pair has been nominated for the 2019 edition of Forbes 30 under 30 in the Social Entrepreneur category.
“We always knew that we wanted something that could be a statement and decided to go with the bracelet because it is not a very large commitment, it can almost be a talking point,” explains Schulze. “So it is not just about our bracelet, but what it represents, which is cleaning the ocean.”
Around 9 million tons of plastic finds its way into the ocean every year, according to a report in the journal Science. Most of it arrives in the ocean via rivers. In fact, a study published by the Environmental Science & Technology journal estimates that just
10 river systems carry up to 90% of the plastic that makes its way to the ocean.
“I think there’s a popular misconception that it is coming from ships just dumping offshore like a garbage truck. It is not dumped,” describes Andrew Cooper.
Cooper and Schulze have designed their newest tool with these data in mind.
Docked behind the Bahia Mar hotel in Fort Lauderdale is an oil rig supply vessel that has gone through a dramatic transformation.
The bright blue 135-foot Ocean Plastic Recovery (OPR) Vessel is equipped with 4 ‘panga’ vessels, an open, outboard powered fishing boat,e ach 22-feet long, and an accompanying landing craft, which will place booms in river mouth areas and pick out the trash they intercept. A unique amphibious excavator will be able to enter marshy estuaries, minimizing damage by floating on pontoons and using its customized claw to grab embedded plastic. OPR Vessel's deck is capable of carrying 310,000 pounds of plastic, and transporting it to the nearest facility where it can be processed for recycling.
“Our mission with the OPR campaign is to create an economy around the plastic,” said Schulze. They are thinking big - really big. “If we prove this business model, we can solve ocean plastic forever,” says Schultze.
To skeptics, cleaning the entire ocean seems like an impossible feat, but not to Alex Schulze and Andrew Cooper.
“The solution to moving a million pounds of trash from the ocean is not to invent a machine or a mechanical hand of God, so to speak, that comes out of the sky and pulls it out,” says Cooper. “It is to influence a million people to move one pound.”
By Maria Bakkalapulo
TOPSAIL INSURANCE MARCH 2018
Over 7 millions tonnes of litter enter our oceans each year. The global movement, 4Ocean is on a mission to stop it and are dedicated to making our seas and coastlines trash free.
4Ocean, set up by two surfing and ocean enthusiast friends Alex and Andrew, is the global movement offering a 100% recycled bracelet that purposefully and proudly funds the removal of litter from our oceans and coastlines.
A huge task in itself to take on the litter that is rapidly consuming oceans, seas, rivers and beaches across the globe, 4Ocean promotes their recycled ocean bangle with the motto; one bracelet one pound.
When purchasing a bracelet from their website you are removing one pound (nearly 500 grams) of rubbish from the ocean. The money from the sale of the bracelets goes towards funding the beach, offshore and worldwide cleanups.
Currently the movement has pulled a whopping 139 tonnes of rubbish from the oceans by removing trash from coastlines before it reaches the seas and utilising their full-time captains and crews who are activley cleaning the oceans and intracoastal waterways.
Anyone from anywhere can join the 4Ocean team and help in ocean litter removal efforts worldwide. With overwhelming response from their supporters, 4Ocean was able to successfully remove more than 250,000 pounds of trash from the ocean in their first year alone. This was only made possible by the continual purchase of our Original - Signature Blue 4Ocean Bracelet and four additional Limited Edition Bracelets released in 2017.
They now have seven full-time sea captains working seven days a week - all year long. In 2017 4Ocean led beach and underwater cleanups in 16 different countries across the globe and continued their mission to clean the world’s oceans and build a more sustainable future.
The goal for 2018 is to remove 1 MILLION pounds (453 tonnes) of litter from the oceans and beaches.
AGNOSTICS
WHAT
THE F */# IS GOING ON ?
fuddrucker11
4Ocean is for profit company pretending to do good for oceans. More than 1,500,000 lbs of plastic are dumped into the ocean EVERY DAY on our planet.
They have collected the equivalent of 3.5 days worth of plastic trash dumping over their entire multi-year lifetime. They will never make a dent in anything. And are mainly selling "good feelings" to people who think they are helping the ocean. You aren't helping anyone except the scammers get rich off a $20 bracelet that costs $1 to make.
I have an idea for a business: Please buy my overpriced plastic bracelet and I'll clean the planet's air. For every $20 bracelet you buy, I'll run my Home Hepa air filter for 1 minute. I'm cleaning OUR PLANET'S polluted
air! You do like clean air don't you?? Just think if only 10,000,000 people buy my bracelet, I'll run my $100 air filter for 10,000,000 minutes. That will make a difference right??? No, not all.
Kriticos-erion June 1 2019
A good comparison to see transparency of efforts is perhaps check out is The Ocean Cleanup.
Ellen88 July 21 2019
Another sad example of unscrupulous using a real issue to raise money for themselves taking advantage of good people's emotions.. They don't even call themselves a charity.
There are many charities that that do little.more than make good salaries for founders or professional fundraiserd. It's all legal so caring folks must check out organization before sending be it $5 or $500+.
MarleneWasTaken
I don't have any reason to believe it's a scam but I do have a couple of thoughts. One is that I am a restoration ecologist. That's not how it works. This is like some community service project designed to keep the charter for the sorority. The kumbaya, feel-good buzzwords aren't doing anything but making buyers imagine they're making some huge difference. The biggest issue I have is the lack of transparency and the same 20 images and 250-word description, looped everywhere. No information available ANYWHERE that describes the processes, the results, or anything to really give any clue as to how this business actually functions. One of the links on their website says "previous causes." Sends you to a sold out bracelet for the Great Barrier Reef. It's the end of May. It's essentially summer in our hemisphere. Probably a GREAT time to have a whole bunch of cleanups, get some brand exposure, and so forth. As of right now, they have only ONE worldwide cleanup scheduled: in Queens. I just feel as if there are way too many questions and even if it IS a legit COMPANY, that's fine. People want to know and should be able to find the information about how this all works, from the start and well into the growth and maintenance phases.
Beowulfsfriend May 25 2019
You made some great points, well said. I have to admit it "isn't " a scam, but as you pointed out better than I have been able to say, it isn't transparent and has a multitude of flaws. It is a legitimate business, just like Shell oil and thus its bottom line is profits over all else. And like Shell oil, do we want to give to them for their clean up efforts? There are many other, and in my opinion, better organizations to support thsn two surfer dudes who have made themselves multi millionaires.
MarleneWasTaken May 25 2019
Thank you. I just saw YET another one of the ads today and decided to do some checking into it again. Yes, again. Nothing had changed. I started digging in a few months ago when some friends and I were talking about the Garbage Patch and the Ocean Cleanup's cleanup efforts and failures when 4ocean came up. No matter where I looked, though, I couldn't find any real information and that bothered me. Seems they would make a lot more money if they provided people with data. Let's be honest... People would see a webpage with "data" or charts or something but few would actually read it, yet be impressed that the info was there, and buy bracelets, checking out with the feeling that they really did something impactful because the data was RIGHT THERE! So this forum came up several pages into my searching and, after looking around at the community, I was like, where the hell was this place when I was younger and needed this kind of support? So. Yeah. Here I am and this post was why I came.
Katie143
I just left Bali, where I work in the export industry. I saw a 4Ocean box in my cargo company’s warehouse. What a i found interesting is that the box was from China, and it said that $23,000 of bracelets were inside. What this means is 4Ocean is manufacturing bracelets in China, not Bali, shipping them to Bali and then shipping them to the US. Why would 4Ocean willingly pay for all this extra shipping? So they can say the bracelets come from Bali. SCAM!!! This prompted me to see if the 4Ocean bracelets are on alibaba, and yep, they are! What does that mean? A factory in China is making the bracelets. So gross in so many ways.
mdflyer
Let's do some simple math. I'm a manufacturing process control and cost estimating engineer. The bracelet cost a few pennies to make. Paying a third world worker a few dollars a day to pick up a few hundred pounds of trash costs another few pennies per pound. The bracelet and a pound of trash pickup is probably less than $1. That leaves a huge profit. Why is this a for profit company and not a non-profit if their goal is to save our oceans? I think this is a couple of surfer dudes preying on the the ignorant with a pretty smile and touting a very noble cause.
cnr85
Just looking at the social media of the founders and seeing their joy at hunting and killing fish while claiming to care about the oceans is enough for me to realise what their intentions are. Cash in on good hearted people's desire to help out in any way they can and make as much money as possible in the process.
rlewis July 21 2019
can you provide links to show what you are talking about?
leatherbear
Very disappointing that one man with a negative personal opinion can create this kind "mess" about a business that is sincerely trying to improve our Oceans situation.
You should be deeply ashamed and humiliated!!!
Beowulfsfriend May 23 2019
When they start a "sincere" effort to do more and to spend more of their funding rather than line their pockets my opinion will change. There are many groups out there making change and not with the express desire to line their pockets with tender. These guys are similar to the many religious groups that very kindly help the needy and yet keep the vast share of the "booty" for themselves. If you want to be self deluded and give to them, do so. I'll help the groups with little to no profit margin. By the way, in no way do I feel ashamed for speaking the truth. I never said they did nothing - they do a lot less than their enormous profits show. Give to whomever you like; personally I look a little deeper. Their biggest boast about their legitimacy is the BBB.
Newhopemom July 14 2019
That's how skepticism works. Question the veracity of everything. A high production value marketing campaign is exceptionally expensive and a red flag. Where do they get that money? Bracelet-only sales seems very unrealistic. Where are the bracelets produced? Are they fair trade? What are production costs? This is a for-profit business, so they don't get the hall pass for nobility on which a non-profit business might skate through. The lack of transparency & data is another red flag. How does their revenue stream breakdown to cover operational/admin costs, bracelet production costs, and clean up costs? It seems like many other sources of revenue would be involved. Being for-profit means they don't have to publish anything like an non-profit would. Their model doesn't add up.
Ellen88 July 21 2019
Really? I don't think so.
CallMeSally
4ocean are an ecommerce business with a charitable front. I have followed this company for over a year, at least up until the blocked me on social media... I was sceptical because they clearly spend alot of money on advertising and marketing, usually when someone polishes a turd that much they don't want you to know it's a turd. At the time I spent hours researching like literally days because i became obsessed with exposing these charlatans but everyone seemed to buy into this ego driven bracelet craze... but I did some math using 4oceons own figures, I took into consideration how much trash had been collected, how much a bracelet was and the length of time they had been running for, I wasnt able to go any deeper like how much they pay employees, and do they get paid also for selling recycled materials because they are set up as a private company meaning they legally don't have any obligations to release analytics. At the time 4ocean had been running for 2 years so I calculated to the best of my knowledge that every year 1'400'000'000lbs of trash goes into the ocean, 2.8 billions pounds of trash over 2 years, 4 ocean over the first 2 years of operation pulled 3'200'000lbs. Every pound pulled costs approx $20 for consumers because they have to buy the bracelets and are not allowed to make donations for some reason... In summary it has cost roughly $32'000'000 to reduce global annual pollution by 0.0001% (3.2million ÷ 2.8billion) If someone can find a flaw in my way of thinking feel free to challenge it but I am pretty sure this is a purely profit driven business with no real impact on the environment, good for the economy though.... check out [theoceancleanup.com]
They actually have plans that seem serious enough to tackle such an issue with expectations and regular updates (not just very well edited pictures)
trying2
After watching their ad for about the 20th time I said to myself that this has to be a scam. How can a legitimate organization spend that kind of money on advertising and be legitimate? Most of their money has to be spent on advertising and not on cleaning up the oceans because cleaning up the ocean has to be extremely expensive. And it really pisses me off because I've got a small company that sells a product on Amazon called the Ecoflap vent cover which actually helps the environment by more efficiently heating, cooling and humidifying homes and rooms in homes. But our sales are really low because we've received bad reviews from people who essentially think our product is a scam when in fact it works. I don't know. I guess the message from 4Oceans is that if you want to sell something you'd better advertise and advertise like crazy. lol
SEALADY1
I would love to see 4 ocean.com and the ocean cleanup join forces! Then they could sell support bracelets. I am all for funding a project like this. Unfortunately there is so much work to be done in our oceans because of the tremendous lack of respect behavior that some people INSIST UPON REPEATING in cluttering our beaches and oceans alike. I would FINE THE HELL OUT OF THEM IF CAUGHT! We should have cameras taping when there are no guards on the beach. And I know people on boats out in the water dump into the ocean! I grew up in N.J. and I never remember having the amount of crap that these beaches have now. Condoms, medical waste, wrappers, cups, etc. HAVE NO PLACE THERE. There are places for people like this...in the woods or a pen! SICK OF THE PIGS ON BEACHES!
Bantu
Wow sounds like people expect a couple young surfer guys to be brain surgeons or criminals. How bout they had an idea, a good idea and they are wroking on it. And for 20 bucks you can help them through another month of expenses. If they make a million dollars each cleaning up other peoples crap.. is that a bad thing? Is it better they become lawayers and charge the working poor 250 dollars an hour for limited help. or sell gas powered cars ?? I say go for it boys and may many more follow and become millionairs, I think the work is sick of most of the other ways people become millionaires
SCAM
OR LEGITIMATE PROFITS
The
above is just an example of comments from the public. If you think it is a
scam, don't buy anything.
As
to the matter of a Scam, 4Ocean is not a charity. Nor do these chaps claim
to be not for profit. That being the case, they may use any marketing
means (so long as they do not make claims that are untrue) to get you to
buy their bracelets. It matters not that they only cost $1 dollar to
produce.
The
fact is that entrepreneurs like this need to have something in the kitty
to pay for blue sky endeavours. In the process, if the owners of the
business get rich, that is fine to a point, so long as it is not blatant
profiteering. But even then, that is not illegal, provided that there is
no mis-advertising and proper accounts are kept, etc.
Nobody
is for one minute suggesting false accounting, just that some of the
claims might be exaggerated to get people to delve into their pockets.
We'd offer that there is no need to mislead the public, where the public
have shown that they want to help. Honesty is the best policy. The facts
that these guys are driven, is good news. Given the scale of the problem,
it is sometimes hard to remain proportionate with enthusiasm running high.
We
would hope that Alex and Andrew will not have their drive blunted by the
adverse comments of some of the buying public, but that with appropriate
assurances as to their good intentions, they might continue to develop
ways of collecting plastic waste from the ocean and beaches, that are climate
as well as ocean friendly. At the moment we doubt a low carbon footprint
in relation to recovery value - but why not let them develop their
business model to be able to make a good case. This is unlikely to happen
overnight where experimentation takes time.
You
may agree with the Agnostics, that marketing the way they are, 4Oceans
perhaps have a duty to be a little more transparent than if they had just
been selling groceries or widgets for a fair mark-up.
We
look forward to hearing more of the Ocean Plastic Recovery Vessel, where
something like this might begin to make serious inroads to stopping ocean
waste invading the marine environment that we rely on for food.
LINKS
& REFERENCE
https://www.topsailinsurance.com/news/item/real-gains-in-removing-ocean-litter.html
https://www.wlrn.org/post/south-florida-company-wants-clean-seas-and-prove-it-can-make-money-doing-it
https://picante.today/latest-news/2018/11/12/9596/4ocean-unveils-one-of-a-kind-135-foot-ocean-plastic-recovery-vessel/
https://agnostic.com/post/276569/internet-advertising-scam-warning-do-not-purchase-4ocean-bracelets-it-is-a-scam-they-do-littl
ACIDIFICATION
- ADRIATIC
- ARCTIC
- ATLANTIC
- BALTIC
- BAY
BENGAL - BERING
- CARIBBEAN
- CORAL
- EAST
CHINA SEA
ENGLISH
CH - GOC
- GULF
GUINEA - GULF
MEXICO - INDIAN
-
IOC
- IRC
- MEDITERRANEAN
- NORTH
SEA - PACIFIC
- PERSIAN
GULF - SEA
JAPAN - STH
CHINA - PLASTIC
- PLANKTON
- PLASTIC
OCEANS - SEA
LEVEL RISE - UNCLOS
- UNEP
WOC
- WWF
|