Be the Change in the World We Want to See

 We live in a village along the coastal line of the cosmopolitan city of Hong Kong. Every time we walk along the beach, we are increasingly shocked at how much plastic is scattered along the sea shore. What is worse is that at least 10 million tons of the 78 million tons of plastic packaging produced every year, ends up in our oceans and rivers.

Plastic now clutters every part of our planet, from the deepest ocean trenches to Antarctica’s sea ice, posing health risks to marine animals, fish, and seabirds.

The plastics contain chemicals and we know that the chemicals can absorb other toxic chemicals that are floating around in the ocean. So now the big question is what are those plastics doing to the animals that eat them. We know that some species of birds and fish eat micro plastics and some even eat some larger plastics and it is deadly for them.

Did you know that there are massive amounts of garbage patches all over the world, of all different sizes and shapes and compositions, swirling around in all the oceans? Many are made up of tiny micro plastics, little parts of plastic hardly visible to the eye, with all kinds of larger items like fishing gear, bottles, containers and even plastic shoes churning around. There are tiny micro plastics that aren't easily removable from the ocean because they cannot be seen, but also just because of the size of our oceans.

Then there are also the huge garbage patches in the oceans, known as gyres. Gyres are large systems of circulating ocean currents, like slow-moving whirlpools, but these areas are always moving and changing with the currents. There are five gyres to be exact. There is the North Atlantic Gyre, the most talked about concentration of plastic, but then there is also the South Atlantic Gyre, the North Pacific Gyre, the South Pacific Gyre, and the Indian Ocean Gyre. The big five help drive the so-called oceanic conveyor belt that helps circulate ocean waters around the globe. While they circulate the ocean waters, they’re also drawing in the plastic waste that we release in coastal areas.

Plastics never really go away, they just break down over and over and over again until they become smaller and smaller from sunlight, waves, big storms.

Plastic packaging is a $198 billion industry and it isn’t going to go away anytime soon.  But marine debris and pollution is a problem that we can solve because us humans and our everyday practices are causing this. We can take any number of steps to keep plastic waste from entering the ocean. We need to change your individual behaviour, stop littering, create less waste, reuse what we can and recycle as much as possible.

We proudly donate 1% of all our sales to the international causes that campaign for beach clean-ups and the collection of plastic litter in our oceans and seas.

Join us in our cause to reduce unused plastic waste and recycle, upcycle and reuse as much as you can. By supporting us with your purchase of a pair of our specially designed sunglasses, each made of 3– 4 recycled plastic bottles, upcycled and reused, you too are supporting the cleaning up of our oceans.