The Cleaner Seas Group is a small company with big ideas… or is it a big company with small ideas? Or more accurately, a life-sized company whose focus on the small ideas has gone big. And we mean global pop sensation kind of ‘big’. Allow us to explain.

Cleaner Seas Group works with the minutiae. Its mission is to tackle one of the biggest perpetrators of ocean pollution: microfibres. It’s estimated that around two million tonnes of microfibres are released into the ocean every year, shed from clothing as it is washed.

Since 2017, Cleaner Seas Group – a team of innovators, designers, entrepreneurs, environmentalists, and surfers – has been working to generate awareness of the issue while developing a real-world solution. That solution presented itself as Indi – a first of its kind washing machine filter that captures those microfibres before they make their way to our waterways. Once done with, the filter can be returned to the Cleaner Seas team who will take those microfibres and recycle them – keeping the system circular – before sending the cleaned filter back to the user to start the process over again. Each of these filters, by the way, are made of either 100% or 75% recycled plastic. Circularity is very much at the heart of this operation. 

So innovative is the solution, the Cleaner Seas Group hasn’t just landed on a way to capture microfibres before they become ocean pollution. The team has also managed to capture the imagination of a generation far more conscientious of the waste being produced by human activity. Even something as seemingly benign as washing our clothes. Of course, it does help with the whole awareness-building thing when one of your biggest fans is Coldplay.

Cold water to Coldplay

“No two days at Cleaner Seas Group are the same,” says Avril Greenaway, director at Cleaner Seas Group. “On any given one of them, some of the team may be attending an All-Parliamentary Party Group meeting in the House of Commons, while others could be surveying a laundry room on one of the world’s biggest cruise liners.”

It’s a long way from its headquarters in Bude that the Cleaner Seas Group has found itself in the six years since it was established. But no matter where the business takes them, the team share that connection around the sea – it’s their ‘why’.

“Since Day One, we have worked to generate awareness through community building, press, collaborations, and events,” says Avril. “We have amassed a strong following helping to amplify the issue from thought leaders to ambassadors and big brands.”

She tells us to watch this space for some ”incredible updates”. More incredible than working with Coldplay? Bigger than being nominated for the Earth Shot 2023 prize? The prospect is tantalising.

But despite the names attached and the scale of its projects, micofibre pollution, Avril admits, remains a ‘lesser-known’ issue.

“Seeing our name in the Coldplay credits at the beginning of their shows throughout their Music of the Spheres World Tour and seeing Cleaner Seas on the Coldplay website and on the Coldplay mobile app has been a moment for the whole team,” says Avril. “This band, they are vanguards in the entertainment industry when it comes to sustainability and their ongoing support is invaluable to us.

“But this issue still demands significant efforts to address it effectively. We continue to push for a greater understanding and a wider acknowledgement of microfibre pollution at every level, including with global organisations, scientists, governments, washing machine manufacturers, and water recycling plants.”

Closing the loop on microfibres

By all accounts, Cleaner Seas Group are at an exciting time in their journey right now. The team has developed both a domestic (retrofit) filter as well as a commercial and marine version of its industrial scale filter, which amplifies the impact of the work exponentially.

Meanwhile, Cleaner Seas Group continues to grow its network of businesses and concerned citizens “who want to deliver a quick win for the health of our oceans”. What’s more, the team have been working closely with Plymouth University to develop some ground-breaking solutions to close the loop on microfibres and bring them all back into the value stream.

This latest piece of work was kicked off in June 2023 and concludes this month when the University and Cleaner Seas Group will share a paper on the results on something very exciting brewing.

“We’re at such an exciting moment for Cleaner Seas Group and the impact we can make,” says Avril. “While offering immediate – circular – solutions to the microfibre issue on local and global levels, we continue to push for change. For our oceans, and for generations to come, we continue to chart our course to a microfibre and microplastic free world.”

Cleaner Seas Group will be showcasing its technology at the Products of Change booth at Brand Licensing Europe next month.

For more information on the Cleaner Seas Group and to find out how you can be working with the team, contact Sarah Lawrence via Sarah@thisisiris.co.uk