Earth Day 2021

In 2021 Aizome was full on removing plastics out of our oceans. This is the story of how we - together with our customers, local groups from Okinawa, and also youtubers - removed 15,000 pounds of plastic from the ocean.

But why should we care about ocean plastic among many other problems humanity faces? Oceans are the origin of life and they are also the basis of a healthy planet. But large amounts of plastic are destroying and poisoning the natural habitats of  living beings. An abundant ocean could feed a billion people a healthy meal everyday, forever. But now aquatic species are being killed by throwaway plastic. Every one minute, there is one garbage truck being thrown into the ocean. The problem of plastic pollution in the ocean is enormous. Plastic has been found in more than 25% of fish from seafood markets from all around the world. In the future, even more than double the amount of plastic will be produced. So, if we don’t want to be the last generation to live a healthy life on this planet, we need to start somewhere cleaning up the mess.
We decided to go hands on when we worked in Japan. Aizome’s founders Misa & Michel decided to organize task forces in Okinawa to clean highly polluted beaches and important breeding grounds for marine life last year in 2021. The Ryukyu islands of Okinawa are located in southern  Japan. They are home to an incredible variety of coral reefs and harbor colorful marine life. So together with hundreds of local people we did big scale beach cleans. We even made a ship from plastic and sailed back to the beach. It was fun. As they returned to the office, far away from the coast, organizing clean-ups remotely was a lot harder.

Thus, we were super excited when we heard that in 2021 many youtubers organized similar ocean cleans #teamseas. Two content creators Mark Rober and MrBeast for example, organized one of the biggest ocean cleanses that have ever been done (a whopping estimated 32 million pounds of plastics). The money which they collect goes to the Ocean Conservancy and The Ocean Cleanup. We felt that we can do best by donating a percentage of our sales to #teamseas. 

Together with you, who have opted for plastic-free bedding, we were able to collect roughly 15,000 pounds of plastic out of the ocean. 

We would like to thank the many people that helped during our beach clean in Okinawa, our clients who trusted us to follow up on our promise, and the many people that made teamseas happen.

With all the challenges we face together, it is encouraging to see we can make a difference. Fate in humanity restored - let’s keep up the good work. Even a small contribution can create a healthy world if we all work together!

Here you can find out more about The Ocean Conservancy, The Ocean Cleanup and teamseas. 

Image: Avue Copyright, used by permission.