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

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]

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. 1 2 3 Huddleston, Tom Jr. (2018-09-07). "4Ocean's surfer founders cleaned up 1 million pounds of ocean garbage". CNBC. Retrieved 2019-03-07.
  3. 1 2 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. 1 2 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.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  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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