4Ocean

4Ocean is a for-profit company founded in Boca Raton, Florida, in 2017. 4Ocean retails bracelets made from recycled materials, as well as apparel and other merchandise for which the materials are environmentally- and socially responsibly sourced.[2]

4Ocean
TypePrivate
Industry
  • Clothing
  • Environmentalism
FoundedJanuary 2017 (2017-01)
Founders
  • Alex Schulze
  • Andrew Cooper
HeadquartersBoca Raton, Florida, United States
ProductsBracelets, water bottles, clothing
Number of employees
Website4ocean.com

Although 4Ocean is a for-profit company, they are also a certified B Corporation, a private certification of social and environmental performance for for-profit companies.

The company uses a portion of the profits generated by bracelet sales to remove one pound of trash from the ocean and coastlines as part of efforts to eliminate plastic pollution in oceans.[3] 4Ocean has cleanup operations based in Florida, Haiti, Guatemala and Bali,[4][5][6][7] and has organised volunteer cleanup events in a number of countries. The company has a "One Pound Promise", which promises that, at a minimum, one pound of ocean waste is removed per item sold.[8]

History

4Ocean was founded by Alex Schulze and Andrew Cooper,[3] who, on a trip to Bali, Indonesia,[2] noticed the beaches were filled with plastic waste; Schulze and Cooper witnessed fishermen pushing their boats through mounds of plastic in order to get to more open waters.[9] Upon learning that plastic waste accumulated on the province's coastlines due to the currents of the ocean, they began to explore ideas of widespread cleanup operations.[3]

Schulze and Cooper created a business model that allowed for volunteers to have access to the supplies and resources necessary for the retraction and disposal of waste found in the water and along coastlines.[2]

As of 2022, 4Ocean claims to have removed over 25 million pounds of waste from various oceans and coastlines since its inception.[10] As of January 2019, over 200 people were employed by the company.[5] A transparency disclosure released through the B Corporation indicated that in 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the company laid off 136 of its 179 employees.[11]

Business model

4Ocean is a commercial for-profit business that is funded by the sales of its online products. These funds are distributed to fund cleanup operations and provide deep-sea cleaning equipment. For every $20 of turnover, 4Ocean claims its employees recover one pound of plastic waste from oceans and coastlines.[12]

In November 2019, Business Insider reported that the advertising archive of Facebook showed 4Ocean had purchased 4,290 adverts, spending $3,654,791, making them the 14th-largest purchaser of political, electoral or issue-focused adverts on the platform.[13]

Awards

See also

References
  1. "4ocean Operations". 4Ocean. 2020. Retrieved 22 October 2021.
  2. Huddleston, Tom Jr. (2018-09-07). "4Ocean's surfer founders cleaned up 1 million pounds of ocean garbage". CNBC. Retrieved 2019-03-07.
  3. "These millennials started a business to rid the world's". Today (NBC). Today (NBC). Retrieved 25 August 2018.
  4. "Locations and Facilities". 4ocean.com. 4Ocean. Archived from the original on 9 November 2021.
  5. Bakkalapulo, Maria (3 January 2019). "This South Florida Company Wants To Clean The Seas - And Prove It Can Make Money Doing It". WLRN-TV. PBS. Retrieved 2019-03-07.
  6. "4ocean/Our impact". 4ocean. Retrieved 19 June 2020.
  7. "4ocean Has Removed More Than 7 Million Pounds Of Trash, Expands Bracelet-Funded Cleanups To Central America". Forbes. 29 January 2020. Retrieved 19 June 2020.
  8. "About Us". 4ocean. Retrieved 2021-07-14.
  9. "Entrepreneurs pay fishermen to collect plastic". Fox 13. Fox 13. 6 August 2018. Retrieved 25 August 2018.
  10. "4Ocean - homepage". 4Ocean. Retrieved 28 October 2022.
  11. "Transparent Disclosure 2020". B Corporation Transparency Documents.
  12. 4ocean. "New Guinness World Record - 4ocean Helps Set the Mark for Largest Underwater Cleanup!". 4ocean. Retrieved 2019-06-28.
  13. Holmes, Aaron (14 November 2019). "From Trump to Planned Parenthood, these are the Facebook pages spending the most money on political ads". businessinsider.com. Business Insider. Archived from the original on 9 November 2021. Retrieved 9 November 2021.
  14. "Agents of Change Archives". SURFER Magazine. Retrieved 21 February 2019.
  15. "4Ocean". Forbes. Retrieved 21 February 2019.
  16. "The Creative Class 2019". Newsweek. Archived from the original on 25 April 2019. Retrieved 21 February 2019.
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