This man turns plastic waste from the ocean into plant pots

By Brelaun Douglas via SWNS

This man is saving the world’s marine life by turning plastic waste from the oceans into delightful plant pots.

Ally Mitchell, 38, was inspired to launch 'Ocean Plastic Pots' after working a salvage job on a ship carrying over 1,900 tons of plastic waste that had hit a reef.

“Successfully preventing that amount of plastic from entering our seas inspired me to create plant pots from waste material, allowing for future growth,” said Mitchell, a saturation diver from Glasgow, Scotland.

Mitchell has successfully removed half a ton of plastic pollution from the oceans to create 2,200 pots, costing $20 each, since he launched his company in 2020.

He began by collecting discarded plastic, rope and other materials from beaches and using a hand-powered molding machine to transform them into brightly colored plant pots.

Mitchell said: “I’ve been slightly obsessed with the idea of a circular of economy and instead of sending waste to landfills I was looking for something that had a net benefit for the environment.

“So if we turn a polymer into a plant pot we’d take a net loss for the environment and turn it into a net gain.

“You take an end-of-life material and recycle it into something new.”

Mitchell recently partnered with a third-party recycler and manufacturer to increase the size of the pots and the amount produced.

The stickers featured on the pots are now made from the same end-of-life materials andMitchell hopes to soon have saucers for the pots to match.

Extremely durable and recyclable, a percentage of each pot sale goes to Ghost Fishing UK, a charity of volunteer scuba divers who specialize in removing nets, fishing gear and other debris that pose a threat to UK marine life.

In the future, Mitchell hopes to expand into using even more difficult materials to create the pots.

He added: “We hope to use ghost fishing net collected from sea. Ghost fishing nets are nets that have been left or lost by fishermen, and they often entangle marine wildlife and damage reefs.

“Working with nets is so unprecedented because they’re so contaminated with marine growth they're hard to recycle.”

Overall, Ally is excited to be able to do something positive for the planet.

He said: “I’ve been working as a commercial diver for the last 12 years and I’ve been fortunate to dive in some pretty special places across Scotland, Singapore, The Ivory Coast, Trinidad and The Congo.

“However, I have also become increasingly aware of the amount of plastic pollution in our oceans...and I really feel a desire to play my part to help protect our precious seas.

“This is a small part, but I really believe we all have a responsibility to reduce the amount of plastic we use on a daily basis.”