CONVO 01: Michel Pardos
On transforming ocean-bound waste into a socially responsible resource
“We transform the plastics threatening our oceans into new sustainable products. Because we believe in the necessity of a circular economy. A lot of what we believe in isn’t revolutionary. Cleaner oceans. Sustainable lifestyles. Waste as a resource.”
- TIDE OCEAN MATERIAL
What do a Thai recycling center, a marginalized community of indigenous fishing people, and Swiss scientists have in common? They’re working together to transform ocean-bound plastic waste into new opportunities, materials and consumer goods.
Tide Ocean Material, or #Tide, is part of a rising class of startups turning ocean-bound plastic into new sustainable products. They partner with scientists in Switzerland to develop their own namesake material. Powered by renewable energy and a chemical-free process, they turn plastic waste that’s often damaged by UV rays and saltwater into granules, and then partner with brands to inject this into new consumer products. For example, together with Triwa, they created Time for Oceans, the world’s first watch collection made out of ocean plastics.
While this is upcycling at its finest, what this story is about is what lies beneath the Swiss startup’s supply chain.
You might wonder, where does a European landlocked country source ocean plastics from?* This takes us to Ranong, Thailand, a small fisherman port town just off the Myanmar border. There, a small-scale recycling social enterprise with direct access to the Andaman sea is working with local fishermen and trash collectors to incentivize them to collect and sell plastics from surrounding islands - which have no waste systems in place - by the boat-load. At the enter, the plastic is sorted, processed, pressed, and sold to #Tide and others.
At the heart of this circular operation is Dr. Michel Pardos, a Swiss national with a PhD in ecotoxicology who left his previous life as a financial trader in Singapore to finding himself trading a different kind of commodity: ocean plastics.
After meeting Michel over a Whatsapp call months ago and learning about the work he’s doing here with the Moken fishing communities, I became fascinated to learn more about this story. I recently paid Michel and his team a visit, learning all about how waste can be a resource can be a business with social and environmental impact.
*But wait, let’s first address the whale in the room: everyone agrees that it just doesn’t make sustainable sense to ship tonnes of plastics across continents. #Tide says they plan to localize operations to Thailand within the next year. In the meantime, they’ve committed to carbon offsetting their footprint through planting trees in Honduras.
Lisa: In this part of the world, we still hear ‘before and after the tsunami’. How is the 2004 tsunami disaster tied to the work you’re doing to run a business fighting plastic pollution?
Michel: I began the project while volunteering for the Jan & Oscar Foundation, a humanitarian initiative founded in memory of two Swiss children who lost their lives to the tsunami, by their mother Laurence Pian. They focus on education and job creation, especially with Moken fishermen communities. The Moken, known as the “guardians of the sea”, traditionally lived and traveled the Andaman Sea between Thailand and Burma, in this region.
The idea to start a recycling center working with young adult Mokens first came about in 2016. But in order to run it sustainably, it meant we needed to come up with a business model that would allow us to compete with the national Thai recycling centers. Collecting waste isn’t that complicated, but it needs to make economic sense.
We wanted to focus on the group of islands on the Thai-Myanmar border, because they don’t have waste systems in place, so there’s a big problem to solve there. However, this means we need to cover fuel costs to bring plastics to the mainland by boat at a premium. If we’re not able to incentivize fishermen and local collectors at a fair, competitive price, the plastic will get burned or end up in the ocean.
I realized we needed to partner with businesses that value ocean plastics as raw material, but also value the social and environmental work we’re doing. In 2019 I finally met #Tide and we started collecting plastics in January 2020.
Moken people, who have been called ‘the last sea nomads’, are a marginalized ethnic minority who have roamed these waters for centuries. Traditionally, they lived a semi-nomadic lifestyle in their ‘kabang’ boats, surviving from foraging, free diving and trading fish for rice.
For the Moken community, the tsunami attracted worldwide attention and not all of it was good. Their people have since become displaced, caught between the nets of poverty, politics, modern capitalism, overfishing and mass tourism.
Other than offering a competitive price to buy plastics, how does this project focus on social impact?
We’re recognized as a Moken-friendly project. Among our ten daily workers, all women, half are young Moken and half are Burmese. Some live in our free on-site housing. We train them how to sort between PET, HDPE, LDPE and PP plastic and press. The goal is to pay at least 315 baht per day, above minimum wage, paid per kilo of plastic sorted. We work to establish relationships within Moken island communities together with village chiefs and recyclers.
Our ambition to have at least one plastic-loaded boat per week, per island community come to the recycling center.
Education is at the core of the Jan & Oscar foundation. Together, we set up a project with a local Ranong school where 70% of students come from low-income families. We created a campus ‘waste bank’ where students can trade recyclable plastics collected at home and learn about ‘refuse, reduce, reuse, recycle’. The school has since reduced its plastic footprint by 50%. It took a few years, but it’s a success story that other local schools are now looking to replicate. Now our goal is to set up waste banks on the five surrounding islands.
You’re one year into running the center. What impact has been made on preventing plastics from leaking into the marine environment?
People assume that ‘ocean bound’ means plastic pulled from the ocean, but it’s defined as abandoned plastics retrieved within a 50km radius of the coastline.
In one year, we collected 135 tonnes of ocean-bound plastics, of which 129 tonnes was PET.
A pretty good start. Roughly 30% was collected from islands and 70% from the coastline. Our goal is to make this 50/50.
Thai islands don’t have waste systems in place. Locals recyclers need to incentivize people to collect their waste and bring it to the mainland.
We can process up to 1 tonne of plastic daily. In normal months, we get 10 to 12 tonnes of plastic delivered monthly. In the monsoon season, the currents change and these volumes increase significantly.
Last year, we organized beach clean-ups during the monsoon season and plan to continue this kind of work in partnership with social enterprise Second Life (Stay tuned for Circularity Club Issue 02).
When it comes to recycling plastic waste, what are some of the challenges in creating impact at scale?
Preventing plastics from leaking into the ocean is a huge part of solving the global plastic puzzle - the most effective way of doing this is still through reducing consumption. I’m not too worried about PET bottles, because they’re 100% recyclable. Demand is growing from big corporations looking to make polyester, fiber and yarn from ocean-bound plastic. But unfortunately, I don’t foresee a diminution of PET supply from producers.
The way forward is circular, and it requires finding synergies between many different players: NGOs, governments, corporations, social enterprises and consumer brands.
Other types of plastic, like foam, fishing nets and non-recyclables, are more complicated. We need innovation, especially to find solutions for plastics degraded through salt and UV rays. And we haven't even started to talk about microplastics…
The global plastics problem is so endless. The work you’re doing here is so meaningful but can feel like a drop in the ocean. What motivates you to go forward with this as a business?
We need to start somewhere. The way forward is circular, and it requires finding synergies between many different players: NGOs, governments, corporations, social enterprises and consumer brands. I hope to be out of business in the next decade, meaning we’ll have solved the plastic crisis!
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Keep reading:
Tsunami, 10 years on: the sea nomads who survived the devastation (Guardian)
Waste as a Resource (Bangkok Post)
The Last Sea Nomads (Guardian Shorts)