Eye-Catching Designs Made from Recycled Plastic Bottles
The company sells a range of eco-friendly items like leggings, rash guards, and board shorts that are made using recycled post-consumer plastic bottles. There are currently 16 causes represented by distinct marine-life patterns, from whale shark research and invasive lionfish removal to sockeye salmon monitoring and abalone restoration.
One such organization is Get Inspired, a nonprofit that specializes in ocean restoration and environmental education. Get Inspired founder, marine biologist Nancy Caruso, says supporting on-the-ground efforts is one thing that sets Waterlust apart, like their apparel line that supports Get Inspired abalone restoration programs.
"All of us [conservation partners] are doing something," Caruso said. "We're not putting up exhibits and talking about it — although that is important — we're in the field."
Waterlust not only helps its conservation partners financially so they can continue their important work. It also helps them get the word out about what they're doing, whether that's through social media spotlights, photo and video projects, or the informative note card that comes with each piece of apparel.
"They're doing their part for sure, pushing the information out across all of their channels, and I think that's what makes them so interesting," Caruso said.
And then there are the clothes, which speak for themselves.
Advocate Apparel to Start Conversations About Conservation
Waterlust's concept of "advocate apparel" encourages people to see getting dressed every day as an opportunity to not only express their individuality and style, but also to advance the conversation around marine science. By infusing science into clothing, people can visually represent species and ecosystems in need of advocacy — something that, more often than not, leads to a teaching moment.
"When people wear Waterlust gear, it's just a matter of time before somebody asks them about the bright, funky designs," said Waterlust's CEO, Patrick Rynne. "That moment is incredibly special, because it creates an intimate opportunity for the wearer to share what they've learned with another."
The idea for the company came to Rynne when he was a Ph.D. student in marine science.
"I was surrounded by incredible people that were discovering fascinating things but noticed that often their work wasn't reaching the general public in creative and engaging ways," he said. "That seemed like a missed opportunity with big implications."
Waterlust initially focused on conventional media, like film and photography, to promote ocean science, but the team quickly realized engagement on social media didn't translate to action or even knowledge sharing offscreen.
Rynne also saw the "in one ear, out the other" issue in the classroom — if students didn't repeatedly engage with the topics they learned, they'd quickly forget them.
"We decided that if we truly wanted to achieve our goal of bringing science into people's lives and have it stick, it would need to be through a process that is frequently repeated, fun, and functional," Rynne said. "That's when we thought about clothing."
Support Marine Research and Sustainability in Style
To date, Waterlust has sold tens of thousands of pieces of apparel in over 100 countries, and the interactions its products have sparked have had clear implications for furthering science communication.
For Caruso alone, it's led to opportunities to share her abalone restoration methods with communities far and wide.
"It moves my small little world of what I'm doing here in Orange County, California, across the entire globe," she said. "That's one of the beautiful things about our partnership."
Check out all of the different eco-conscious apparel options available from Waterlust to help promote ocean conservation.
Melissa Smith is an avid writer, scuba diver, backpacker, and all-around outdoor enthusiast. She graduated from the University of Florida with degrees in journalism and sustainable studies. Before joining EcoWatch, Melissa worked as the managing editor of Scuba Diving magazine and the communications manager of The Ocean Agency, a non-profit that's featured in the Emmy award-winning documentary Chasing Coral.
It's no big surprise that Hollywood science fiction films so often look to the deep for their monsters, landscapes and mystery. After all, the deep ocean is more alien to us than the surface of the moon.
But bizarrely, some scientists think the ocean floor might well be the very place where life on our planet first evolved.
The spiral tube worm, or Sabella Spallanzanii, lives in membranous tubes, often reinforced by the inclusion of mud particles and has a feathery, filter-feeding crown that can be quickly withdrawn into the tube when danger threatens.
Gavin Newman / Greenpeace
Discovery of Hydrothermal Vents
One of the hottest candidates for creating the right conditions are deep sea "hydrothermal" vents, where super-heated water and chemicals meet. These vents exist far below the reach of sunlight, in an area devoid of any oxygen. They're created at the places where giant tectonic plates meet, by the heat from the inner Earth pushing through the crust of the planet.
Hydrothermal vents were only discovered in 1977 – and astonished scientists with their towering chimneys and bizarre animals discovered around them. Giant tube worms, bacteria-eating crabs and other surreal creatures somehow thriving at great depths, clustered around columns billowing out "smoking" superheated, mineral-rich seawater.
This discovery challenged what people thought about life on Earth, and even more so when "alkaline" versions were discovered in 2000. Caustic conditions, similar to weak bleach, or bicarbonate of soda, seemed even more unlikely to support life. Yet they did.
The Lost City: The Real Primordial Soup?
The Lost City is the best known of these hydrothermal vents — a collection of turrets, towers and chimneys that could be as much as 120,000 years old.
Research shows that these vents are creating hydrocarbons — molecules that are essential for all life on Earth. Could it be that churning chemicals and minerals in superheated seawater in places like the Lost City were actually where life started? Is this the real primordial soup?
The honest answer is — we still don't know. In the last couple of decades, scientists have struggled to survey and understand the mysteries of the Lost City.
But as research continues to try and answer these questions, the seabed has attracted attention from industry keen to exploit the minerals and metals down there too.
Hydrothermal vents at Dom João De Castro.
Greenpeace / Gavin Newman
Monster Machines at the Ready
We don't know very much about the deep sea, and we know even less about remote, inhospitable deep sea vents. Though they exist in extreme chemical and physical conditions, they seem to be very fragile and precarious.
Yet even before scientists have started to scratch the surface of understanding these remarkable environments, they are at risk of being damaged or destroyed forever by industries keen to mine minerals from the deep sea.
Licenses have already been granted to explore for mining the seafloor with monster machines — which risk wrecking these places before they are even understood.
Underwater footage of seamounts in the Azores, Princess Alice Banks.
Greenpeace
A Wake-Up Call
The rush to exploit the deep ocean, before we even understand it, has to be a wake-up call.
It's not as if the public is clamoring for the seafloor to be ripped up for us to get a new gadget (especially when companies can't even get their act together to reclaim and recycle the materials we already have!). Not only are we threatening unique marine life, but we might destroy these places forever.
That's why Greenpeace's Pole to Pole expedition is sailing to the Lost City this summer with the scientist who discovered this wonder of the deep ocean, to learn more about its mysteries and make the case for protection, rather than exploitation.
Did life on Earth begin in the cauldron of chemical soup around deep sea hydrothermal vents? I don't know. But I do know that we're already harming enough species and habitats, and we have no justifiable reason to trash the fragile deep sea and all the wonderfully weird marine life that makes its home there.
The Esperanza arriving to the Azores for the Lost City Leg of the Pole to Pole Ship Tour.
Barbara Sanchez Palomero / Greenpeace
Willie Mackenzie is an Oceans Campaigner with Greenpeace International.
When I was growing up in the Washington, DC area, many members of my community struggled with not only unemployment, but also with our drinking water containing so much lead it caused Congress to open an investigation.
We had trouble with a myriad of other issues as well, from poor air quality (largely due to the industrial factories in the city) to finding adequate public transportation options to get to the grocery store.
To paraphrase the author and poet Audre Lorde, our collective struggles were not singularly focused, therefore we did not live single-issue lives.
A woman stands at the window of her home looking out at Shell refinery just a couple of yards away, in an area dubbed "Cancer Alley" in Louisiana.
This is the reason I am in the climate movement.
I believe that by building a broad and all-encompassing climate movement, we will be able to tackle many of the issues that members of my community faced.
Addressing our climate crisis means addressing our lack of good paying, sustainable jobs, it means children having clean water to drink, it means reliable public transportation run on renewable energy, and so many other solutions.
Which is why I was very disappointed to read that Tom Perez, chair of the Democratic National Committee, declined to hold a climate debate for the 2020 Democratic presidential candidates because he stated climate is a "single-issue" and debates should cover a broader range of issues besides just climate.
People ride in the back of military trucks as they are evacuated through the flooded streets of Houston after Hurricane Harvey caused record flooding in southeast Texas.
The issues faced by my community clearly show that our climate movement is not a single-issue movement. If you look at other parts of the country you will see communities are facing similar issues because their leaders have not fully grasped or embraced the solutions. Solutions which can be found within the climate movement.
Cities like Flint, Michigan are struggling with the issue of clean water. Yuma County, Arizona is struggling with the issue of high unemployment. Bakersfield, California is struggling with the issue of air pollution. And year after year, communities like those on the coast of Texas are destroyed by hurricanes and flooding.
A woman holds a jar of water from her well, which was contaminated after hydraulic fracturing drilling began near her Washington County farm.
Our climate movement also encompasses international issues as well. Our climate crisis will have a devastating effects on trade, cause massive famine in countries such as Sudan due to flooding of farmland, and overall causes global instability.
We need to know whether or not the next leader of the United States understands the potential that lies within our climate movement to solve many of the pressuring issues facing our world today.
Now is the time for Presidential candidates to discuss all these issues facing U.S. citizens and our international community.
And an effective platform through which citizens can learn about their candidates' foreign and domestic plans for all these issues is a climate debate.
Tom Perez needs to reconsider his position and the DNC needs to step up to the plate and host a climate debate, because the multiple issues within our climate crisis can no longer be pushed aside. These issues must be addressed if we care about the future stability of our nation.
The issues we are facing are great but our potential is greater. If you believe we need a climate debate now, for all the issues facing our communities, take action and demand it.
Tell Tom Perez that we need a climate debate now and let's see which presidential candidate has the plans to solve the climate crisis and the multi-issues that comprise it.
'This Is an Emergency. We Need the Democrats to Act Like It': Outrage as DNC Says It Won't Host a 2020 Debate on Climate Crisis https://t.co/oQ3MC3bH3h #2020election #Climatechange #Jayinslee pic.twitter.com/aPNXJ0jYur
— Renewable Search (@RenewableSearch) June 6, 2019
- 4 Reasons Why We Need a Climate Debate - EcoWatch ›
- Youth-Led Petition Urges 2020 Democratic Candidates to Hold ... ›
1. The media still isn’t addressing climate change in a way that matches the urgency of the problem.
Despite years of record-breaking extreme weather, the climate crisis usually gets minor mentions when mainstream news comments on climate-linked disasters or Trump's pro-fossil fuel rhetoric. Climate change shouldn't be a footnote — it should be center stage.
Holding a climate-focused debate will ensure that the climate crisis is treated as a serious issue to address, not an opinion to be questioned.
It would push the candidates to specifically address how they will tackle one of the biggest challenges of our lifetime, and give us all the ability to make an informed choice on who will lead us into an era of bold climate action that's accountable to communities.
2. We need bold, visionary leaders to beat Trump in 2020.
We've spent more than two years resisting a racist and destructive Trump agenda. With daily attacks on our values and freedoms, this administration has attempted to divide us and wear us down. But people power has given us a record number of women in Congress, voting rights restoration in Florida, and the beginnings of an ambitious Green New Deal. This is just the start. Now we need presidential candidates that will look beyond the status quo and reimagine what's possible.
The next president should have the guts and vision to move us toward a safer, healthier, and more prosperous future where we reject the politics of fear and exclusion — while directly confronting how corporate polluters tarnish our air, our water and our climate without repercussions.
It's not the time for half-measures if we want to beat Trump. For decades, the bar on climate policy has been incredibly low. If a politician says they believe in man-made climate change, they've been lauded as progressive on climate. Agreeing with nearly every climate scientist in the world isn't leadership.
We all deserve to know whether each Democratic candidate has a well-thought-out plan for the climate crisis and go toe-to-toe with the oil and gas industry.
Here's what a climate-focused debate could reveal:
- Who supports the Green New Deal and who doesn't;
- How the candidates will stop the fossil fuel industry's influence on our democracy;
- Who will push our economy to be powered by 100 percent renewable energy;
- How candidates will support communities affected by climate disasters;
- Who will make a responsible plan to phase-out fossil fuels while protecting workers.
3. Communities across the country are being badly hurt by the effects of climate change.
Politics has always been divisive. But recently the emphasis on "us versus them" has gone too far. Instead of creating common goals for thriving communities, with healthy air and water, and shared access to clean energy, the calls of "fake news" and "build a wall" put people in conflict with one another. We need to hear how candidates for president are going to bring us together — because we need everyone in this fight.
If we don't shift the way we produce energy in this country, the people who have contributed the least to the climate crisis will continue to suffer the most from devastating extreme weather events and environmental pollution.
The time for talk has passed. We need to move to a 100 percent renewable energy economy and hold corporate polluters accountable for the damage they've caused.
4. We only have just over a decade to take drastic action on climate change.
Scientists tell us we have until 2030 to cut carbon pollution in half to stave off the worst effects of climate change. You do the math. Our future rests on the shoulders of whoever we elect as the next president.
Every day we allow to pass without taking action is one day we come closer to an irreversible ecological tipping point.
Since we have just over 10 years to take major steps forward on climate, the coming years will be a critical time to make up for all the years of climate inaction on both sides of the aisle. The next president of the U.S. must take bolder, faster climate action than any leader has before.
We want to see who is going to claim the mantle of climate leadership, and the best way to do that is for the candidates to debate their plans face-to-face on the debate stage.
Together, we can build a powerful movement to make sure that bold climate action is at the top of presidential candidates' priorities — but we need everyone on board.
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- 2020 election ›
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- Youth-Led Petition Urges 2020 Democratic Candidates to Hold ... ›