187 K 2022 attendees - Plastic Bank

It’s a wrap for this year’s K Show! While the world’s no. 1 rubber and plastic trade fair has ended, the quest for Ocean Stewardship for some attendees has just started.

For the duration of trade fair, the Plastic Bank team had meaningful conversations with individuals pained by the degradation of our ocean caused by plastic pollution and interested in finding sustainable solutions that empower a true circular economy.

Our commitment at K was to stop 50 plastic bottles from flowing into the ocean, for each person who signed up to become an Ocean Steward at our booth. Throughout the event, 187 individuals pledged to steward the collection of ocean-bound plastic and empower collection communities in South East Asia, Latin America, and Africa. That’s a total of 9,350 bottles gathered by our collection community members.

To further the conversation about ocean plastic, our Founder David Katz joined “The power of blue-sky thinking for a future with plastics” fireside chat with Marco ten Bruggencate, President Plastics Europe and Commercial VP EMEA Dow, on the seventh day of the event. David shared how Plastic Bank is revealing value in plastic waste and helping alleviate poverty for communities in the world’s most vulnerable coastal areas.

You, too, can become an Ocean Steward and turn off the tap to plastic pollution. Watch David’s fireside chat at K 2022 and find out how you can get involved.

2021 New Plastics Economy Global Commitment progress report

We've accomplished significant results toward our 2025 goal. For example, between January 2020 and December 2020, we prevented 510,350,100 single-use plastic bottles from entering the world's ocean - the equivalent of 10,207,002 kilograms prevented from entering the world's oceans.