OCEAN-FRIENDLY PRACTICES

At The Ocean Project we practice an Ocean Minded culture. In all that we do we consider our impact on the ocean. We are conscious about our resource use, personal behaviors, and about where our products come from and how they were produced.

Carbon-Light Commuting and Traveling

We are an office of caring commuters and travelers. For the most part we either walk, bike, or bus to the office and do the same to get around outside office hours. We have a few fixed up "company bikes" for interns to use. We also have carbon-free telecommutes from home occasionally.

We consciously limit our travel, especially transcontinental and international flights. While in-person meetings are essential, we try to communicate mainly by email and phone, as well as with skype and similar services.

Each year we decide which conferences and meetings are most worthy of air travel and adding to our office carbon footprint and limit ourselves to about three conferences and larger meetings per year - and we carbon offset our travel. We also collaborate with others to make presentations related to our work in far away regions. For instance, with outreach related to our market research initiative we have partners on the west coast who often give presentations at west coast conferences while we cover more of the east coast.

 

Energy Efficiency

In order to do as much as possible to reduce our electricity and heating needs, we:

  • Only turn on lights if we need them and turn them off when leaving the room.
  • Power down our computers, monitors, and other office machinery when they're not in use.
  • Insulate our windows in the winter to keep cold air out and heating needs down.
  • Use only fans to keep cool during the summer months.
  • Make do with small, energy-efficient space heaters to keep us at a comfortable 60 degrees in the winter.

Conscious Consuming

We also take conscious consumption seriously; between the team we plant some of our own food, eat a vegetarian diet, and stick to sustainable seafood choices despite frequent shrimp cravings.

 

Reusing, Recycling, and Composting

We love to find cool ways to reuse as much as possible of what passes through our office. For example, we reuse the packaging that came with our Seas the Day products as padding when shipping product orders, and donate the boxes to local schools and artists for re-use in art projects, etc.

We are also active recyclers; in addition to paper waste, we recycle any drink bottles, food cans, and wrappers. We avoid generating much food waste by bringing packed lunches and using mugs for our water, tea, and/or coffee

Our leftover food scraps, tea bags and the like go into the compost, and are eventually used as an organic fertilizer in the spring and summer or for our potted plants.

 

Paper Use

Our paper policy in a nutshell is to reduce, reuse, recycle...

  • We use as little paper as possible – we read all emails on the screen, only print documents when really necessary (printer is used on average once a week), and provide most of our resources and information virtually.

    Reducing consumption is a key issue - by doing so we reduce consumer demand, which in turn reduces production and saves trees, energy, and pollution. Reducing consumption also reduces paper waste and recycling needs.

  • What paper we do use is “ocean friendly” – "ocean-friendly" paper means more than just recycled, it means recycled paper composed primarily of, often 100%, post-consumer waste (PCW), and paper that is unbleached (or bleached in a chlorine-free process).

    Unfortunately, most paper labeled “recycled” on the market is actually mainly composed of wood chips and mill scraps; the U.S. Environmental Projection Agency (EPA), for example, only requires paper to contain 30% PCW to be labeled "recycled". To benefit forests, landfills, and the environment, however, recycled paper should be composed of 90 - 100% PCW.

    Compared to copy paper made from 100% virgin forest fiber, paper made from 100% PCW recycled content reduces:

    • total energy consumption by 44%
    • net greenhouse gas emissions by 38%
    • particulate emissions by 41%
    • wastewater by 50%
    • solid waste by 49%
    • wood use by 100%
    (Source: Environmental Defense Fund's Paper Calculator and The Green Line Paper Company).

    The Ocean Project purchases our paper from The Green Line Paper Company, who specialize in green office products and offer 100% PCW and 100% chlorine-free office paper.

  • We reuse what we use and recycle what we reuse - Despite all the awareness about recycling, still only about 50% of paper in the US is recycled. At The Ocean Project we do our part; we reuse one-sided paper received or generated by our office to print any in-house documents and recycle all paper that passes through the office.
  • For printing our Seas the Day bookmarks we use Hemlock, a Forest Stewardship Council-certified environmentally and socially responsible company based in Canada. By choosing a company based nearby we also save on transportation-related global warming pollution. We invite you to read about Hemlock’s environmental commitment.

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