Balancing Profit & Purpose Feat. OceanSaver

Meet Micah Douglas, Brand Manager at OceanSaver, who are on a mission to save our Ocean from single-use plastic with plastic-free, plant-based cleaning refills that clean as well as the leading brands without harming Ocean life.

Here he shares how OceanSaver’s unique approach merges profit with purpose, supporting initiatives like the Solent Seascape Project to restore marine ecosystems. Learn how their commitment to the environment inspires meaningful change, one wave at a time.

For some background information, who are you as a business and what makes your business offering unique?

Hey there! I’m Micah, Brand Manager at OceanSaver. We’re on a mission to save Ocean life from the plastic pollution and harmful chemicals in 28 billion single-use plastic cleaning products created every year.

Our plastic-free, plant-based Laundry products, Cleaning Sprays, and Dishwasher tablets clean like the leading brands without harming Ocean life. Why wouldn’t you try the first Ocean Friendly laundry capsule of the market?

By harnessing the power of the Ocean, we can motivate change. The Ocean has all the answers. It’s the world’s carbon sink, every other breath we take is from the Ocean, but it isn’t on the agenda for wider environmental change. Big things are being ignored, like the Amazon’s mangroves twice as carbon rich as it’s rainforests. Ocean environments and marine life are a powerful workforce for carbon sequestration, but nobody talks about that.

Also, plastic pollution. By 2050 it is forecast that our Ocean will have more plastic than fish. 29 billion cleaning products are made each year, nearly all of which are used once and become plastic pollution.

We want to show that by simply adjusting the way you clean, you can join the Ocean movement, reduce plastic and make a difference. Don’t be crabby.

Every OceanSaver product bought makes an impact, with over 2 million pieces of plastic and 11,000 litres of harmful chemicals saved from our Ocean so far.

Pollocks to plastic!

What got you interested in joining the movement to balance Profit and Purpose and what has been your journey so far.

Absolutely. Meaningful business is about having a porpoise!

We want to reconnect people to the Ocean and inspire them to get involved in positive Ocean work. It’s about using our products to inspire small changes that directly impact the health of our Oceans. And putting our money where our river mouth is.

It’s taken us a few years to get here, but we recently partnered with Blue Marine Foundation, which is an amazing opportunity to motivate change. 1% of all OceanSaver products now goes towards the Solent Seascape Project, an effort to restore at least 30% Solent’s seascape, tipping the balance from a degraded state to a naturally expanding, connected and productive ecosystem.

The Solent Seascape Project is the first nature-based solutions and seascape scale recovery restoration project of its kind in the UK. It opens fin-credible opportunities for our community to get involved in rewilding our Ocean and helps us further our mission of saving Ocean life.

The projects being directly impacted by our 1% pledge includes:

1. Oyster Reefs – by planting oyster reefs, we’ll be restoring a keystone species. Oysters are nature’s water filters. A single oyster can filter up to 50 gallons of water a day, removing pollutants from the Ocean, and attracting up to 400 other species back to the Solent.
2. Seagrass meadows – this is an important habitat for many creatures and a natural form of CO2 capture
3. Saltmarsh – we’ll be restoring a key habitat that helps protect the Solent’s water quality and prevent coastal erosion.

Creating a wave of change!

Balancing our profit and purpose won’t stop there, but it’s a positive, meaningful step change for us.

In your case, what does it mean for your workers, customers, community and environmental considerations?

We haven’t seen the full effect of Blue Marine yet, but the reception from OceanSavers in brand and out has been super positive. Even before Blue Marine, our team came here to make a difference because we all deeply care about our Oceans. So, getting involved in nature-based solution making, and nature-based climate interventions with Blue Marine, has brought a new energy to our team. It’s allowing us to truly express our values and get hands on in projects improving Ocean health.

In March, we went to Hamble Marina to visit the Oyster hatcheries. This part of the Solent has been impacted massively by decades of dredging and recreational boating, so it’s a real effort to improve water clarity and reverse the effects of humans. We spent the day pulling up oyster hatches, checking their health, giving them a clean (of course, we’re from OceanSaver!) and dropping them back in the marina. It was an awesome opportunity for our team to see the project first hand and play a small role in enabling oyster larvae to enter the Solent and begin/continue water filtration. These overlooked Ocean animals are doing a BIG job!

We’re a small start-up based in London. It isn’t always possible for us to feel connected to our work, and to feel like we’ve got the headspace to consider the impact of our work. The next goal is to make sure we can continue our Ocean project work.

Could you share a little bit about your current campaign “The Ocean Will Thank you”?

Last year, we were incredible grateful to have won the Sky Zero Footprint Fund- £250K worth of TV media on Sky channels.

We created an advert, “The Ocean Will Thank You”, which is a fun and radically positive way to encourage people to make an easy switch to save our Ocean.

Introducing the nation’s favourite crabs – Bluey, Lil’ Hermit, Fiddler, and Hairy Harry – sung by the incredible “Longest Johns”!

Watch the full ad here.