Conscious Consumption and the New Bioeconomy

When I founded Fantastic Oceans in 2005, I believed the fight against plastic pollution would be won in laboratories. I was half right. The materials arrived — the new bioeconomy of degradable products is real, tested, and ready. Food containers pressed from sugar-cane bagasse. Cutlery, razors, golf tees, shopping bags. Micro-beads for scrubs made from PLA instead of plastic. 3D-printed braces and casts. The opportunities are limitless.

What's missing is the choosing.

Teach the children to see

That is why Fantastic Oceans has always been an education project first. We teach children conscious consumption — not guilt, but sight. A child who learns to see what a package is made of, where it goes when it leaves her hand, and who profits from her not asking, becomes an adult the ocean can count on.

We put the message where attention lives: I wrote and designed a Fortune magazine centerfold for the cause, and we sponsored a journey retracing Marco Polo's route from Italy — because plastic pollution does not respect borders, and neither should the story we tell about it.

What business can do this year

I have sat on both sides of this table — the advocacy side and the product-development side — and the playbook is not complicated:

• Swap the defaults. Sugar-cane food containers on beaches and in beach-town restaurants first; build outward from there to cups and cigarette-butt programs.
• Make the good choice sellable. Reusable straws branded to the place that sells them — with proceeds to cleanup — turn a lecture into a souvenir.
• Enforce, kindly but firmly. Encourage hotels, restaurants, and vendors to adopt these products, and put real penalties behind the standards once they exist.
• Private-label the movement. Let any company willing to sponsor with dollars showcase a compliant product line. Set the bar; make them qualify to be seen.

The designer's part

I am a fashion designer by training, and I hold my own industry to the same light. Every product line I have produced — from uniforms to dancing shoes — taught me the same lesson: the material is the message. A beautiful object made carelessly is not beautiful.

The ocean doesn't need our sympathy. It needs our choices — one conscious purchase, one child taught to see, one habit at a time.

Rachael Pereira is the founder of Fantastic Oceans (fantasticoceans.org).