Lauren Beck is the former editor of Dockwalk and was with the publication from 2006 to 2023. At 13, she left South Africa aboard a 34-foot sailing boat with her family and ended up in St. Maarten for six years. Before college, she worked as crew for a year, and then cut her journalistic teeth at Better Homes and Gardens and Ladies’ Home Journal online. She loves traveling, reading, tennis, and rooting for the Boston Red Sox.
What if the next item you buy also has an added benefit for the ocean? For every item purchased, OceanR removes one kilogram of ocean waste from the ocean. The company, which is based in Cork, Ireland, designs its high-end clothing for luxury resorts and superyachts using sustainable processes. “Our goal is to clean up our oceans and have fun doing it,” says CEO and Founder Tom Cotter, who opened OceanR in 2016. “We love spending time in, on, or around the water and have been exposed to the harsh realities that our oceans are in trouble.”
“We love spending time in, on, or around the water and have been exposed to the harsh realities that our oceans are in trouble.”
As Cotter explains, all their products are made with eco-friendly fabrics — they “predominately work with recycled polyester that comes from recycled plastic bottles, recycled fishing nets, and reclaimed ocean waste.” As he explained in a recent press release, they also work with Ocean Balance, which has 18 fabrics they use for their collections.
The recycled polyester helps to reduce water consumption by 20 percent, energy by 50 percent, and CO2 by 60 percent. Even better, the recycled polyester can be recycled again. For its carbon emissions, OceanR works with the Plant-for-the-Planet initiative with a goal of replanting 1,000 trees each year, making them a carbon negative office.
The company also works with nonprofits. Their current partnerships include Enaleia, which trains professional fishermen on how to earn more while catching less fish and how to adopt new, more sustainable fishing techniques. They also support Tengah Island Conservation, which is a nonprofit biodiversity management initiative in Malaysia, which was formed to protect the turtle population. Its most recent eco endeavor was a beach cleanup in Kefalonia, Greece.
OceanR has worked with Richard Branson’s Necker Island and has recently collaborated with a famous designer in Ireland to create “the first fully sustainable formal crew uniform,” which will launch in October 2022. They also just launched the OceanR Original Collection and are working on the 2023 collection for January 2023. You can also customize products ranging from sweatshirts to T-shirts and swimwear, for both men and women.