If you buy an ink cartridge from HP, some of the plastic might have come from bottles collected on streets and canals in Port-au-Prince, Haiti–intercepted before they could end up in the ocean. Since 2017, the company has worked with local collectors to gather more than half a million pounds of plastic in the area, keeping around 12 million plastic bottles out of the Caribbean.
It’s one of a growing number of companies incorporating ocean-bound plastic into its supply chain. Today, HP announced that it is joining a coalition of those companies called NextWave Plastics, founded by Dell and the nonprofit Lonely Whale last year. Ikea also joined today, and plans to make its first prototypes out of ocean-bound plastic by the end of 2019.
“Everybody needs to step up [to solve the problem of ocean plastic], including business, and I see no reason why business shouldn’t be leading,” says Ellen Jackowski, global head of sustainability strategy and innovation for HP.
HP began working in Haiti in partnership with Thread, a company that works to turn plastic bottles into a material that brands like Timberland have used for making clothing and shoes. The process brings fairly paid jobs to the area and helps compensate for the lack of municipal recycling.
Other companies in the coalition have used plastic headed for the ocean, or plastic already in the ocean, in products from skateboards to carpet tiles. Humanscale recycled old fishing nets from the ocean into an office chair.
“The key is for us as a society to see plastic as value, not as waste. Today everybody sees it as waste. How do we drive enough demand that people see plastic as value and not something that you want to throw away?” says Jackowski. “Plastic’s a pretty amazing material. We’ve gotten a little carried away with it. So how do we put in the right processes in place in our society so that there’s enough value that we continue to reuse it rather than create more?”