Plastic Bank, SC Johnson Partnership Keeping Bottles from Oceans

Plastic Bank, a social enterprise revolutionizing the global supply chain for recycled ocean-bound plastic, has announced it has reached the significant milestone of stopping 1 billion plastic bottles from entering oceans. Plastic Bank’s global partnership with consumer-brands company SC Johnson, has accounted for more than half of this achievement.

“At SC Johnson, we are driven to create a more sustainable world where every part of our operation, from sourcing to consumer disposal, leads to an increasingly lighter footprint on our planet today and for future generations,” said Fisk Johnson, chairman and CEO of SC Johnson. “By joining forces with Plastic Bank, we are building a recycling ecosystem that helps prevent plastic waste from threatening the health of our planet and provides a pathway to greater economic mobility for vulnerable communities. We enthusiastically endorse others to join Plastic Bank in its efforts to create a regenerative plastics economy.”

 One billion plastic bottles are the equivalent of stopping more than 44 million lb of plastic that would have otherwise found its way into oceans.

“Plastic waste entering our oceans is one of our greatest global challenges. At a time when the world is calling for greater responsibility, this significant milestone is evidence of our ability to make deliberate environmental, social and economic impact,” said David Katz, founder and CEO of Plastic Bank. “Our partnership with SC Johnson has been instrumental in transforming Plastic Bank from a little engine to a train that is driving change around the world.”

 SC Johnson’s global partnership with Plastic Bank is creating meaningful impact for both people and the planet and accounts for more than half of Plastic Bank’s total volume of collected plastic. To date, the partnership has:

• Created more than 250 collection points across Indonesia, the Philippines and Brazil since 2018 with plans to expand further to Thailand and Vietnam by 2022.
• Stopped roughly 23 million lb of plastic, the equivalent of more than 500 million bottles, from disrupting ocean ecosystems.
• Provided more than 15,000 people with additional income.

In 2019, SC Johnson launched the industry’s first product using 100% recycled ocean-bound plastic in a major home cleaning brand, Windex, and has since expanded its 100% recycled ocean-bound plastic bottles to its Mr Muscle brand in the UK and Ireland.  The company’s goal is to collect 30 million kilograms of plastic waste through the partnership by 2022, the equivalent of more than 1.5 billion plastic bottles, from more than 500 collection points across Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam and Brazil.

In reaching the one billionth bottle milestone, Plastic Bank worked in partnership with more than 17,000 individual collectors across Haiti, the Philippines, Indonesia, Brazil and Egypt. In exchange for collected plastic, collectors receive premiums that help provide basic family necessities such as groceries, cooking fuel, school tuition and health insurance.

The material collected in Plastic Bank’s closed-loop recycling ecosystems is reborn as Social Plastic, billed as an ethically recovered plastic that protects  oceans and helps address poverty by transferring its value to those who help collect it. Once processed, Social Plastic can be reintroduced into the global manufacturing supply chain for the creation of new products and packaging materials.