Method, in an effort to advance its environmentally conscious mission, has announced a new soap product, which is packaged in plastic bottles derived from recycled ocean plastics and post-consumer recycled materials. The ocean plastics are reclaimed from litter that’s washed up from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

The small cleaning products company set out a year and a half ago to raise awareness about plastics pollution and to demonstrate smart ways of using and reusing the plastics that are already on the planet.

In an effort to show how ocean rubbish can be made into plastic bottles, Method employees, with the help of local beach cleanup groups and volunteers, hand-collected more than one ton of plastic from the beaches of Hawaii. The result? Ten percent of each bottle (40,000 in all) is made from sea plastic.

Company co-founder Adam Lowry, however, is realistic about Method’s efforts. “We know that only a small amount of plastic will be taken out of the ocean for the bottles we make. We know that’s not the solution. But we know we can have a much bigger impact if we start to change people’s minds about their role in protecting our oceans,” he said.

The company says, “Through this new and innovative use of recovered ocean plastic, we hope to show how design can be used to tackle environmental problems…by recycling and reusing existing plastic, we can turn off the tap. And that is the first, most important step toward improving the state of our oceans.”

We couldn’t agree more.  We also suggest taking this one step further by REDUCING the amount of disposable plastics consumed by scaling down waste-and choosing to reuse items (like reusable water bottles) whenever possible.

FMI on Method’s innovation, visit http://methodhome.com/ocean-plastic/