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American apparel company From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
4Ocean is a for-profit company founded in Boca Raton, Florida, in 2017. 4Ocean retails bracelets made from recycled materials, as well as apparel and other merchandise for which the materials are environmentally- and socially responsibly sourced.[2]
Company type | Private |
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Industry |
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Founded | January 2017 |
Founders |
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Headquarters | Boca Raton, Florida, United States |
Products | Bracelets, water bottles, clothing |
Number of employees |
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Website | 4ocean |
Although 4Ocean is a for-profit company, they are also a certified B Corporation, a private certification of social and environmental performance for for-profit companies.
The company uses a portion of the profits generated by bracelet sales to remove one pound of trash from the ocean and coastlines as part of efforts to eliminate plastic pollution in oceans.[3] 4Ocean has cleanup operations based in Florida, Haiti, Guatemala and Bali,[4][5][6][7] and has organised volunteer cleanup events in a number of countries. The company has a "One Pound Promise", which promises that, at a minimum, one pound of ocean waste is removed per item sold.[8]
4Ocean was founded by Alex Schulze and Andrew Cooper,[3] who, on a trip to Bali, Indonesia,[2] noticed the beaches were filled with plastic waste; Schulze and Cooper witnessed fishermen pushing their boats through mounds of plastic in order to get to more open waters.[9] Upon learning that plastic waste accumulated on the province's coastlines due to the currents of the ocean, they began to explore ideas of widespread cleanup operations.[3]
Schulze and Cooper created a business model that allowed for volunteers to have access to the supplies and resources necessary for the retraction and disposal of waste found in the water and along coastlines.[2]
As of 2022, 4Ocean claims to have removed over 25 million pounds of waste from various oceans and coastlines since its inception.[10] As of January 2019, over 200 people were employed by the company.[5] A transparency disclosure released through the B Corporation indicated that in 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the company laid off 136 of its 179 employees.[11]
4Ocean is a commercial for-profit business that is funded by the sales of its online products. These funds are distributed to fund cleanup operations and provide deep-sea cleaning equipment. For every $20 of turnover, 4Ocean claims its employees recover one pound of plastic waste from oceans and coastlines.[12]
In November 2019, Business Insider reported that the advertising archive of Facebook showed 4Ocean had purchased 4,290 adverts, spending $3,654,791, making them the 14th-largest purchaser of political, electoral or issue-focused adverts on the platform.[13]
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