Where there lay grief and sorrow, so too resilience and courage lie in wait, ready to emerge.
Where there lay grief and sorrow, so too resilience and courage lie in wait, ready to emerge.
“Humans are the only species on this planet that create garbage, and garbage is a system design failure; it should not exist. The vision and ultimate goal of our work is to eliminate the concept of garbage.”
Chloé Dubois doesn’t mince words when painting a picture of the environmental disaster humankind has brought to bear on the planet. But the co-founder and executive director of Ocean Legacy also hasn’t let the enormity of the challenge distract her from the work that needs to be done.
“That’s really where I feel I thrive and come alive — being in that discomfort and embracing those edges.”
And it’s that willingness to face her own discomfort that motivated Chloé to first embark on the journey that would lead to her founding Ocean Legacy.
“It was around 2010. I was going through a transformative course led by eco-philosopher Joanna Macy, and that, coupled with the documentary ‘Albatross’, led me to a place of deep ecological grief.”
Realizing that the grief could suffocate her, Chloé turned to her practice of Jin Shin Do (Japanese acupressure), which helped the stuck energy of grief move through her body and create space for courage to emerge.
Ignited by this inner well of courage and resilience, Chloé looked around to see how she could make a difference in her home on the coast of British Columbia. The answer was washing up on shore.
In 2013, she initiated Ocean Legacy with a vision of ending ocean plastic pollution, while also creating pathways for people to shift how they see themselves in relation to nature.
“My personal goal, and the goal that I’ve created as a core founding principle for Ocean Legacy, is to reconnect humanity back to nature — where people inherently know that they are nature, and create that respect with the natural world, so that we can protect it.”
Twelve years on, Ocean Legacy is turning the tides across Canadian coastal communities, as well as the US, Mexico, Guatemala, and Panama, with impressive cleanup volume stats- 2,200 km of shoreline cleaned, 6.7M lbs of plastic collected, and over 6M lbs diverted away from landfill.
Ocean Legacy’s impact, however, extends well beyond cleaning up plastic pollution. At the heart of Ocean Legacy’s purpose and vision is their four-pillar, hands-on approach – EPIC (Education, Policy, Infrastructure, and Clean-Up) to combatting and transforming plastic pollution.
This replicable methodology can be adopted and adapted by other governments, businesses and organizations to create lasting, systemic changes in managing plastic pollution.
The organization’s most epic achievement (so far) has been creating a market from scratch for their ocean-recovered plastic products. Chloe wasn’t willing to simply dump the ocean plastic in a landfill and call it a day.
In 2016, staying true to her vision of eliminating garbage, Chloe and the team at Ocean Legacy began exploring how they could process the recovered plastic into viable products. At the same time, Chloe began forging partnerships, building systems, and seeking out potential customers for the recycled materials and products they were manufacturing.
In 2022, Legacy Plastic was recognized as the first commercially available plastic pellet in North America made entirely from recycled ocean debris.
Today, 90 percent of their recovered materials are diverted from landfill and over 1 million pounds are converted into Legacy Plastic and licensed to manufacturers making everything from plastic lumber to planter boxes.
As a result, Ocean Legacy has worked with over 25 brands to bring 30 different products that contain ocean-recovered content to market across home and garden, outdoor recreation, pet accessories, and construction sectors, as well as industrial applications in poultry and fishing.
While Ocean Legacy has undoubtedly proven there’s a market for Legacy Plastic, the journey from a small volunteer-based foundation to a pioneer in plastic circularity has been challenging on many fronts.
“Creating a novel national supply chain system for materials that have never been recycled before in Canada. I don’t think people realize what it takes to set up systems and partner with governments and First Nations… to literally be the bridge… around garbage that no one wants to pay for because nobody values it.”
Entrenched power players have added complexity to Ocean Legacy’s efforts to invoke systemic change.
“Subsidies for virgin plastic production are expected to exceed US$150 billion in the coming decades, often funded by unaware taxpayers. This support enables the oil and gas industry to preserve outdated systems that undermine the health of people and the planet.”
Throughout Ocean Legacy’s journey, Chloé has remained adamant that the organization engages deeply with the local communities where it is working.
“It is absolutely critical that all voices are brought to that table, and the development of these initiatives is founded in the actual needs of the communities…Like the community in Guatemala, they replaced the word ‘cleanup’ with ‘communication’, because in their community communication was absolutely integral….I really believe that the power is with community. If you get enough people working in the same direction in a vision that people can get behind, anything is possible.”
In 2022, Ocean Legacy was selected as a Coralus Venture, and Chloé was able to connect with many others in a tightly woven network that shared her vision, passion for systems change and collective action.
“It has brought so many different people together in the direction of creating radical generosity…and it’s allowed me and my colleagues to feel like we’re not the only ones going through a lot of these issues.”
The Coralus community has also been a valued source of connection, mentorship and trusted feedback for Chloé as she’s navigated HR issues, change management, and how to stay in relationship with Ocean Legacy’s many partners as it grows.
As Chloé prepares for a full restructuring of Ocean Legacy, she’s excited to tap into the Coralus collective and explore the deep questions that are bubbling to the surface.
“How do we restructure to really embody the fundamental socio-economic changes that we need to have integrated into the baseline of the work that we’re doing collectively, and what does that actually look like?”
Reflecting back on a journey born from deep grief, catalyzed by an inner courage, and realized through the collective determination of many volunteers, communities, and other champions, Chloé’s advice to others seeking to make a difference in the world is to get comfortable with being uncomfortable and to take action.
“Choose your hard, because life isn’t straightforward, and you’re going to be challenged no matter what you do. Being in that discomfort and embracing those edges… when you’re in it, it can be very challenging. But then what comes out of it is just so powerful and magical. Stick with it.”
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