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.
In his appearances this morning, Pruitt was hammered for admitting that he and Trump never discussed climate change, criticized for his support of the declining coal industry and slammed for dodging questions about Trump's acceptance of climate science. The Trump administration has misrepresented academic studies, the reality of the Green Climate Fund, India and China's commitments, and much more. Distorting everything from climate science to the Sierra Club's own strong support of the Paris agreement, Pruitt's appearances are littered with the same kind of deceit that marked his Senate testimony, where he lied about everything from using personal email for government business to climate science.
This administration's increasingly defensive attempts to spin their disastrous decision to leave the Paris agreement knows no bounds, no shame, and no respect for reality. Contrary to Pruitt's distortions, the Sierra Club said then and we believe now that the Paris climate agreement marks a historic turning point for humanity, and no amount of lies spewed by Donald Trump and Scott Pruitt can ever change that.
After making this historic mistake, the administration has been met with a tidal wave of criticism and action that undermines their position. World leaders are slamming Trump and creating their own alliances that leave the U.S. behind. Three coal plants closed the same day Trump announced he would not honor our country's climate commitments. The next day, three more plants were announced for closure in Missouri, along with a massive investment in local wind power. The Mayor of Pittsburgh—the city Trump cited as to why he was withdrawing from Paris—joined the mayors of Orlando, Florida, Columbia, South Carolina and Portland, Oregon in committing to 100 percent clean energy. Trump and Pruitt are on the ropes and they are flailing to defend themselves with shockingly confounding explanations.
Pruitt claims we are making progress on emissions reductions while not acknowledging his 14 lawsuits against the EPA, attempting to undermine that progress. Pruitt and Trump are attacking the efficacy of a climate change agreement while not acknowledging the reality of climate science. They are even claiming the Sierra Club didn't support this agreement when we were on the ground in Paris fighting for it. They seem to have five different explanations, none of which are true.
Here are the facts. By withdrawing from the Paris agreement, Scott Pruitt and Donald Trump are turning their backs on American families, eating away at America's global leadership and standing alone on the wrong side of history.
The agreement, which entered into force on Nov. 4, 2016, has been signed by every nation on Earth except war-torn Syria and Nicaragua, which would like it to be even stronger. Since the agreement came into force and Trump began to waver, dozens of countries—including India, China and the EU—have reaffirmed their commitment. The earliest the U.S. will be able to complete the withdrawal is Nov. 4, 2020, one day after the next U.S. Presidential election.A recent Yale Program on Climate Change Communication poll found that nearly 70 percent of Americans, including a majority in all 50 states, support the U.S. participating in the Paris agreement.
Generations from now, Americans will look back at Donald Trump's decision to leave the Paris agreement as one of the most ignorant and dangerous actions ever taken by any president. Trump's decision to ignore the vast majority of the American public and the scientific community will harm our country, costing us lives, jobs and our role as a world leader. Trump has isolated our country on the world stage, ceding our leadership position and our economic advantage on clean energy to India and China, and justifying it all by chanting a slogan from a baseball hat.
It's hard to overstate the negative consequences at home and abroad of this foolish, self-destructive move that will only help boost profits for few of the worst polluters while risking the health of our families and communities. Future scholars will search in vain to find a President with this level of disdain for reality and the future of humanity.
Effective leaders are driving state and local action in the United States, moving strongly forward as coal plants across the country continue to retire, dirty fossil fuel infrastructure investments falter, and innovative policies drive clean energy jobs like solar and wind to profound new heights. With our allies, Sierra Club members and supporters have helped retire more than 250 polluting coal plants in recent years, and also ensured that more than 25 American cities, from Atlanta, Georgia to San Diego, California, have committed to getting 100 percent of their energy from clean, renewable sources by 2030.
American climate advocates have a message for the world: we aren't waiting around for Donald Trump to pull his head out of the sand, and neither should you. The Paris agreement is the collective achievement of leaders around the world, and it cannot and will not be derailed by the ignorance of one man whose term of office is highly uncertain.
Watch Trump's announcement here (starts 37 minutes into the video).