Photo: Sway
The latest installment of the UN’s IPCC report was released last month, and I promise you it is not a nice read. The challenges we face going ahead are many and the scale truly monumental; the actions to tackle them are not even close to enough. Yet sometimes you can take one of the many devils by the horn and truly do something big. Here enters the legendary Tom Ford and the CEO of the NGO Lonely Whale, Dune Ives, who, together, decided to put an end to the gigantic issue of thin-film plastic pollution.
You know thin film – it’s that annoying thing that is absolutely everywhere, from your sandwich wrap to supermarket vegetables. It is also heavily used in fashion for storage bags and polybags used to ship clothes, cosmetics, or other items. Thin-film plastic is made from low density polyethylene (LDPE), which is produced from ethylene, aka petroleum or natural gas. And it ain’t good news, because it never gets recycled and ends up in landfills or polluting our lands and waterways on a truly unimaginable scale. Today, thin-film plastic contributes 46% of the approximately 11 million metric tons of new plastic that enters the ocean every year. Once in the sea, it is ingested by animals, sits on the ocean floor, and is virtually impossible to extract. And yet again, the fashion industry has a huge responsibility in it – considering that almost 180 billion thin-film plastic polybags are used every year and very few are collected or recycled.
Tom Ford (a Virgo and practical man, like me – maybe this is why we are friends) approached the issue from a matter-of-fact way. “Several years ago, I was watching a talk show and Adrian Grenier, who co-founded Lonely Whale, was speaking on plastic waste in the ocean,” he shares. “Of course, I knew pollution was a problem, but not the extent of which pollution, particularly plastic and single-use plastic, is flooding our oceans and having such an impact on the chain of life on this planet.” So together with the unstoppable Dune, last year they launched the Tom Ford Plastic Innovation Prize, the only global competition focused on creating scalable and biologically degradable alternatives to thin-film plastic polybags. The prize is a two-year competition, followed by three years of support for competition finalists, focused on the advancement of scalable and truly biologically degradable plastic alternatives that can replace thin-film plastic at scale in current supply chains. Alongside the competition, Tom has also launched a pretty cool recycled ocean plastic watches collection, which truly signals that the time for plastic pollution has stopped forever.
Tom’s passion is driven by his nine-year-old son, Jack. “He is hyper-aware of the environment and the importance of recycling and sustainability,” he says. “His generation has been taught about these things at school since kindergarten. Fashion is a contributor to global waste, there is no argument in that, unfortunately. It’s important to my company because it’s about all of us and the world our children will inherit. I can make changes in my daily life, but I can make a bigger impact through my company.”
Tom Ford
Tom and Dune gathered an incredible and diverse group of judges to select the finalists (including me and the team at Eco-Age) and when you sit (virtually, on Zoom, unfortunately) with Don Cheadle, Stella McCartney, Susan Rockefeller, Trudie Styler, Melati Wijsen, Danni Washington, Saskia van Gendt, Audrey Choi, Steven Kolb, Ellen Jackowski, Dr Andrew Forrest, Tom Szaky, Joe Kudla, John John Florence, and Liz Rodgers, you can imagine the enthusiastic (and sometimes heated) discussions we had, looking at a huge number of applications from 26 countries. We had to consider several factors to make sure the finalists were able to deliver a well-rounded and scalable solution to the problem. End-of-life behavior and how long it takes to degrade were obviously key, but it was also important to consider other environmental impacts, as well as social impact, technical performance, and affordability. Also, if change must be made fast, the solutions chosen must have a clear pathway to becoming reasonably cost competitive, to ensure they are truly scalable and accessible.
In March this year we announced the eight finalists, or as I like to call them, climate optimists: Genecis, a Canadian biotechnology company that reprograms bacteria to make premium materials from low-value organic waste; Kelpi, from the UK, which harnesses seaweed to create compostable, marine-safe, low-carbon bioplastic packaging; Lwanda Biotech, a Kenyan social enterprise addressing both community-level plastic pollution and agricultural waste through the development of alternatives to thin-film plastic packaging; Marea, an Icelandic startup leveraging sustainable local algae streams to create a replicable model for thin-film alternatives; Notpla, which is pioneering natural membrane packaging that uses seaweed; Sway, a US company offering seaweed-based, home-compostable replacements for thin-film plastic packaging; Xampla, a University of Cambridge spinout inspired by the strength of spider silk, turning proteins from common plant sources like peas into high-performance plastic alternative materials; and Zerocircle, an Indian company making wildlife and ocean-safe packaging materials from locally cultivated seaweed.
Photo: Sway
These eight finalists will now enter a year-long material testing phase, which includes field testing in Caribbean waters and in-lab testing led by the New Materials Institute at the University of Georgia. In situ field testing in Pacific Northwest waters will be led by the Seattle Aquarium. The aquarium will also lead bespoke, first-of-its-kind laboratory-based tests designed to simulate what would happen in a marine mammal gut if the materials were eaten.
The finalists’ different approaches have been fascinating to witness. And it’s their attitude and determination that inspire progress. Optimism has always had this power. Humanity has eradicated diseases, overcome injustices, and even reached the moon because enough of us believed we could. The future is about intersectional collaboration between industry leaders, scientists, NGOs, and other partners. This mission hopes to affect the largest commercial shift away from thin-film plastic, but you can never underestimate what could come next when you have Tom Ford as an optimist leading the way.
Read Next: In Conversation: Manuel Arnaut and Livia Firth Take a Deep Dive Into World of Ethical Fashion
Originally published in the May 2022 issue of Vogue Arabia
