We welcome guest blogger Albert Poulos, Founder of Jetsam Salvage, on the topic of plastics. Save The Great South Bay has teamed up with Jetsam on a long-sleeved shirt that is made completely out of recycled plastics. Proceeds of the shirt support our organization’s efforts. Thank you Albert for contributing to the conversation.
The War on Plastics
Our oceans and waterways are facing an extreme problem: plastics. With plastic quickly dominating our waters and no proper way to break them down, we need to act now more than ever. However, part of solving the problem is understanding how we got here.
The problem…
Plastics quickly dominated the consumable product world. Although while the plastics problem is obvious, it is also complicated. Plastics not only hold your drinks and sandwiches, but also are in key medical instruments, transportation parts, and building supplies. For this reason, plastics will not be fully eliminated from humanity’s production means for quite some time.
Additionally, we as a society have become heavily fixated on single use plastics. These plastics make up make up close to 90% of the 300 million tons of new plastics produced each year, and while we talk about recycling, we are creating plastics at our highest rate yet. This over saturation of plastic has lead to an almost incomprehensible impact on our environment and oceans/waters specifically. According to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, by 2050 we will have more plastic in our ocean than fish, and it is believed that we eat a credit cards worth of plastic every week. Over 8 million pieces of plastic find their way into our oceans every year, leading to the loss of hundreds of thousands of marine lives.
What’s our next step?
So, how do we fight this war on plastics? We need to address the issue in two fronts. First of which, we need to reduce / eliminate our dependency on single use plastics. We can make our fight easier by forcing companies to rethink their packaging and evolve with the growing need to change our footprint. Secondly, we need to reduce the amount of plastics already in our environment. Plastic’s biggest problem is that it does not break down naturally, so how do we reduce? We recycle. Not just old bottles into new bottles, but for any use possible.
Jetsam Salvage Co. based in Patchogue NY, believes that the key to fighting the war on plastics is by extending the product life cycle of existing plastics. Founded by Albert and Peter Poulos, two brothers from Long Island, NY, who felt it was time to take a much more aggressive stance on the problem facing our oceans. Growing up on Long Island, the Great South Bay was at the heart of their childhood. In recent years, as the Bay has fallen subject to a worsening brown tide issue, and as the oceans became more polluted with plastics, it became clear that something had to be done.
With a passion for our oceans and waterways at its core, Jetsam Salvage Co. was founded in 2021 as a solution for our growing plastics and pollution problem. Made for coastal living, all Jetsam products are made using recycled plastics or aimed to reduce the use of single use plastics. With a growing line of products they will be able to remove an ever increasing amount plastics from our environment. In addition to recycling plastics into designer Coastal goods, Jetsam pledges a portion of their sales to partners like Save the Great South Bay, with the goal of cleaning up the mess.
Save the Great South Bay and Jetsam Salvage Co have also partnered together on The Coastal Collection, a line of clothing dedicated to cleaning coasts around the world. Designed with the partnering organization, Jetsam creates apparel to specifically represent the specific coat that each organization works to protect. Every sale of the specific organization’s product sees a larger amount donated to support our cause! For more information please visit their website. Jetsamsalvage.com