Connection Thursday: the shoreline crews of Seven Clean Seas, and why a plastic credit comes last
Every bottle we fill carries a small amount of plastic: the cap, the pump, the label backing, the shrink band on a refill can. We have spent years reducing that number. We have not reached zero, and we would rather say so plainly than pretend otherwise.
That honest gap is where our partnership with Seven Clean Seas comes in.
What the partnership actually does
Seven Clean Seas is an ocean plastic organization whose crews collect waste from coastlines and waterways before it drifts further out to sea. Through our plastic credit partnership with them, we fund the removal of an equivalent amount of plastic from the ocean for every gram of plastic we produce. Gram for gram, the plastic that leaves our factory in Bali is matched by plastic pulled out of the water.
Behind that sentence are people. Collectors walking the tide line with sacks. Sorters separating what can be recycled from what cannot. Teams logging weights so the accounting is real and not just a promise on a label. Their work is physical, repetitive, and often thankless. It is also measurable, which is exactly why we chose it.
What a plastic credit is not
Here is the part many brands leave out. A plastic credit does not erase a bottle. It does not make single-use packaging fine. It cleans up after a system that still produces too much plastic, and it should never become a license to keep producing more.
So we treat it as the last step, not the first. First, refill: our refill stations have run since day one, and in 2025 they kept 2,245 bottles out of landfill. Second, reuse: the bottle you already own is the lowest-impact bottle there is. Only then, for the plastic we cannot yet avoid, comes recovery through Seven Clean Seas.
It sits alongside our other water-focused work, including the river cleanups we ran with Sungai Watch here in Bali. Rivers carry plastic to the sea. Seven Clean Seas works further downstream. Different crews, same coastline of care.
One small way to stand in the chain
The most useful thing any of us can do is make less plastic necessary in the first place. If you already have one of our bottles, a refill can (like the Begone Bug Spray refill can) tops it up with less packaging than a new bottle. Pair that with a zero waste skincare routine, and the plastic left for anyone to collect gets smaller every month.
The takeaway: credits clean up. Refills prevent. We do both, in that order, and we thank the people on the shoreline who make the second half real.
