Dragon dives into plastic offsetting
Californian performance goggle and eyewear brand Dragon has entered into a plastic offsetting partnership with international recycling ecosystems developer Plastic Bank, based in Vancouver.
After joining hands, each pair of Dragon sunglasses, snow goggles and optical frames sold “will prevent the equivalent of 10 plastic bottles from entering the ocean”, as per the terms of the deal.
The brand already offers an upcycled range of sunglasses, featuring frames constructed from the pellets of five recycled water bottles apiece. It also produces frames made from castor bean oil-derived resin.
“We keep talking about climate change when what we need to focus on is business change, like [this] one brought about by Dragon,” commented Plastic Bank founder and chief executive, David Katz.
A for-profit social enterprise, Plastic Bank works to establish a network of community-powered plastic collection branches within 50 kilometres of coastlines and waterways, across the globe. Its “ocean stewards” exchange ocean-bound waste plastics for benefits including internet access, life and work insurance and healthcare access, transforming plastic pollution into a form of tradable currency for under-developed communities.
Once recycled, this plastic, traceable from the point of collection, is marketed to manufacturers as Social Plastic feedstock. Today, Plastic Bank has collection communities in Egypt, Brazil, Indonesia and the Philippines.
Image: Dragon.
