Plastics Supply Chain Turns Off the Tap

HP Inc. and IKEA are joining the NextWave Plastics global consortium—a collaborative initiative that brings together leading companies to "turn off the tap" of plastic entering the ocean. The goal is not only to scale their own ocean-bound plastics supply chain efforts, but to also extend across industries to make it commercially viable for all, for maximum impact.

Since September 2016, when it announced that it would join the First Mile Coalition to clean up plastic waste and create economic opportunity for Haiti, HP and its partners have built a fully functioning ocean-bound plastics supply chain using bottles collected in Haiti. Along with joining NextWave, the tech giant has sourced 250 metric tons of ocean-bound plastics from Haiti; more than 12 million plastic bottles are being upcycled into Original HP ink cartridges instead of entering the Caribbean Sea.

In June 2018, IKEA announced its updated sustainability strategy, with new commitments to become people and planet positive by 2030. Commitments include removing single-use plastic products across its stores by 2020 and designing all IKEA products with new circular principles by 2030, with the goal to use only renewable and recycled materials.

In 2017, as part of a United Nations commitment to Sustainable Development Goal 14, Dell Technologies and Lonely Whale launched NextWave Plastics to build on Dell’s ocean-bound plastic program launched in 2016. Since then, NextWave members Bureo, Dell Technologies, General Motors, Herman Miller, Humanscale, Interface, and Trek Bicycle have each developed their product use cases to demonstrate the viability of integrating ocean-bound plastics found in areas such as Indonesia, Chile, Philippines, Cameroon, and Denmark, into their supply chains.

NextWave member companies are currently sourcing verified ocean-bound plastics from Cameroon, Chile, Denmark, Haiti, Indonesia, and the Philippines. They are committed to expanding supply chain efforts in those countries and adding new supply sources from a minimum of three additional countries including India, Taiwan, and Thailand by 2025. Through these efforts, NextWave companies will also expand the types of material sourced and will work closely with other supply chain development initiatives to create scale within priority communities.