Ocean Bottle

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Ocean Bottle exists to bring people together to turn the tide on ocean plastic. Ocean Bottle makes reusables work even harder for the planet, through design-led products that fund the collection of ocean-bound plastic with every sale and refill. Ocean Bottle partners with organisations in areas where plastic pollution is worst, opening plastic collection points where collectors can exchange plastic for money and access social resources such as healthcare, education, mental health support, and financial security. Ocean Bottle’s goal is to prevent 7 billion plastic bottles from entering the ocean by 2025.

Client Objectives

When Ocean Bottle came to us, they wanted to calculate a Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) of their core products, primarily the 500ml Ocean Bottle. The life cycle analysis aims to calculate the total Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions emitted by one Ocean Bottle over its entire lifetime, from the extraction of raw materials to the end of its life and ultimate disposal.

Ocean Bottle already had good visibility throughout its supply chain and could provide a clear picture of an Ocean Bottle’s life cycle.

The ability to assign an environmental impact to each stage in the Ocean Bottle’s life enabled Ocean Bottle to pinpoint high-impact activities as a priority for GHG emissions reduction. Additionally, we provided detailed recommendations about how Ocean Bottle could reduce its impact throughout the supply chain.

Business Challenges

Ocean Bottle already had a good knowledge of their supply chain when they came to us. However, some products were not in production yet, meaning that there were challenges associated with making the most accurate assumptions to assign GHG emissions. That being said, this was easily tackled with our advice and experience with life cycle analyses.

Additionally, Ocean Bottle’s increasingly global consumer base meant that the final products were delivered using a wide range of freighting methods and routings. This complicated the supply chain, and as a result, the lifecycle analysis, because the carbon intensity of product distribution is heavily influenced by the mode of transport and the distance over which they are transported.

Green Element ensured that these deviations were accurately accounted for when calculating the lifecycle emissions by mapping out five separate distribution routes: UK, Ireland, Europe, USA, and Rest of the World.

Green Element Approach

With data collected by the Ocean Bottle team, Green Element were able to map Ocean Bottle’s supply chain and apply GHG emissions to each stage of the life cycle. Green Element provided expert advice throughout the data-gathering process to collect the highest quality data available at that time. Green Element also fed back on the data gathering process, providing advice for future projects with a detailed data quality analysis.

Green Element delivered a full life cycle inventory for 8 individual products sold by Ocean Bottle, with a detailed analysis of each and clear recommendations for GHG emissions reductions. Green Element also modelled potential GHG emissions under different scenarios of transportation, recycled material content, and manufacturing energy sources to help The Ocean Bottle in its decision-making processes.

Client Benefits

Ocean Bottle has achieved a thorough life cycle analysis of each of its main products, allowing them to plan a robust GHG emissions reduction strategy for future supply chain decisions. Ocean Bottle has identified the most impactful areas of its supply chain and is now actioning changes with the confidence of knowing they are making an informed decision.

Ocean Bottle could clearly extract and prioritise all the action points to frame its emissions reduction strategy and was given the proper tools to enact changes with its stakeholders.

Ocean Bottle can use the results of its life cycle analyses to push others in the industry to do the same and collaborate on decarbonisation towards the ultimate goal of reaching global net-zero GHG emissions.