Plastic Bank recycling effort partners with Henkel as it expands

Officials at Plastic Bank are forging major business partnerships, getting props from the United Nations and preparing for a Vatican visit as their programs to stem the tide of ocean-bound plastic spread beyond the shores of Haiti and the Philippines.

The Vancouver-based for-profit social enterprise pays poor people to pick up plastic from waterways, canals, beaches and other access points to oceans. They redeem the items at collection centers for money, goods and services like cooking fuel and phone charging.

Then partners on the ground sort, wash and reduce the plastic to flake for easy shipping to manufacturers, including Germany-based Henkel AG & Co. The maker of home, laundry and personal care products like Loctite adhesive and Persil detergent announced it is forming a strategic partnership with Plastic Bank to become a leader in sustainability.

Henkel describes the partnership as "turning environmental challenges into life chances" in an Oct. 24 news release about its new role to support recycling infrastructure in impoverished areas. Details will be released at a Nov. 15 news conference in Düsseldorf, Germany.

In a phone interview, David Katz, founder of Plastic Bank, lauded Henkel for becoming the first major consumer goods company to be a strategic partner. He said the manufacturer will pay a premium for "social plastic" to use in packaging while it not only meets sustainability goals but improves thousands of lives.

The plastic collectors often put their redemption income toward school tuition, which brings educational and career opportunities. Katz says Plastic Bank addresses the root cause of ocean plastic while easing global poverty.

In another new effort, Henkel and Shell Oil are participating in plastic off-set programs like those used to reduce carbon footprint, Katz said. For its part, Shell has committed to fund the collection of 1 million kilograms (2.2 million pounds) of ocean-bound plastic and then to use the flake.

By the end of the year, Katz expects to announce similar new partnerships with billion-dollar companies, including one that aims to be the first plastics-neutral company in the world. This company will determine how much plastic is used per employee and then make a contribution that equates to the cost of extracting that volume of material from the environment.

More than 8 million tons of plastic is dumped into the oceans every year, according to Plastic Bank. Some of it comes from developing countries with poor or no waste management systems in place.

To show business partners like Shell the ocean-bound plastic in Haiti, Katz took a company representative a mile above the capital of Port-au-Prince to a hillside community where garbage collection is a challenge. Rains carry plastic bottles, bags and other garbage to creeks and streams that flow down to the ocean. The town is a point of origin, making the collection center there an important point of diversion.

"We're engaging the entire world to be a part of the prohibition of plastics from flowing into the ocean. That's what we're doing," Katz said. "The world needs to not focus on cleaning the ocean, which is ridiculous. The last thing the world needs to do is clean the ocean. The very last thing. We get to that right after we turn off the tap of plastics flowing into the ocean."

At the COP23 Climate Summit, which runs Nov. 6-17 in Bonn, Germany, Plastic Bank will receive a Lighthouse Momentum for Change award from the United Nations. The award recognizes practical and scalable efforts to address climate change and set sustainable development goals.

With dozens of collection centers each in Haiti and the Philippines boosting the incomes and living standards of an estimated 10,000 people, Plastic Bank plans to set up operations in Brazil and Indonesia next.

"Having the United Nations endorsement and being able to use the U.N. logo gives additional support and logistical argument to brands that are in the process of using our material or considering to expand programs with our material," Katz said. "We know that we will engage more organizations."

Even though there's a premium on social plastic, which goes to pay the collectors, Katz said the material is in a category by itself with a valuable branding and marketing story compared to virgin plastic and even recycled plastic.

"That's what we provide our customers," Katz said. "They can exhibit that they are helping clean the world and eliminate poverty."

He likens Plastic Bank to a convenience store where the world's poor turn plastic waste into a currency for things they need. The collected items then become feedstock for flake, which Katz said even if used for only 10 percent of a product's content, offers environmental, social and financial benefits.

"We price outside the resin market but it does make an impact," Katz said. "We turn the model upside down and take that price incentive — the additional fee for extracting the material — and we create it as a reward for the poor. Now it becomes a livable wage. That's what we do."

Katz has been invited to the Vatican on Nov. 19, which Pope Francis designated as the first World Day for the Poor. The pope is calling on people of all faiths to serve those living in poverty through deeds, not words. He cites a "bitter and endless list" of reasons behind poverty, including oppression, violence, moral degeneration and greed.

Katz is supposed to meet the pope and offer some ideas about how the Catholic Church and its 1.2 billion members could work with Plastic Bank to benefit parishes and communities.

Katz said the partnership could help collection efforts in Brazil, where few municipal recycling programs exist and 64 percent of the 130 million people are Catholic.

"Part of our program is creating ecosystems globally that increase recycle rates, especially where there are none," Katz said.

He envisions a program where Catholics bring their recyclables to church weekly and Plastic Bank offers some kind of match.