Ocean Recovery Alliance is an NGO focused on creating innovative solutions and collaborations to improve the health of the ocean. Its network of organizations, entrepreneurs and innovators, particularly related to plastic sustainability and circularity, but also dedicated to broad ocean governance and new thought leadership, helps create engaged and active dialogue where gaps often occur due to between entities that often do not have a history of working with one another. The group creates purposefully designed activities to educate, build awareness and provide solutions which inspire positive societal change at the community, national and international levels.
Background
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Ocean Recovery Alliance is an NGO based in Hong Kong and California (501c3), focused on creating innovative solutions and collaborations to improve the health of the ocean. It creates networks of organizations, entrepreneurs and innovators, particularly related to plastic sustainability and circularity for a wide variety of stakeholder groups, from companies, multi-lateral institutions, governments, villages and youth. It is dedicated to broad and new thought leadership, to help create engaged and active dialogue where gaps often occur due to between entities that often do not have a history of working with one another, both on plastic pollution issues, and ocean governance. The group creates purposefully designed activities to educate, build awareness and provide solutions which inspire positive societal change at the community, national and international levels.
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It's current ongoing work in both Cambodia and Indonesia, include its innovative Harvest Plastic Programs in each location, which focus on the uncontaminated collection of all plastic types from village households. This makes it easier to sort and process plastic for recycling, and immediately leads to avoided dumping in the environment, waterways and open burning. The programs are active in village communities which do not have access to normal waste management or collection services, and are now showing proof of how it's Jurisdictional Upswell movement programs bring about positive societal change across entire communities at one time, in this case, on the focused collection of plastic from households before it is allowed to be contaminated by other waste materials, bringing scale and quality to recycling solutions.
The founder of Ocean Recovery Alliance, Douglas Woodring, was awarded the prestigious 2018 Prince's Prize for Innovative Philanthropy by Prince Albert of Monaco for his work with the ocean. Two of the group’s international programs were launched at the Clinton Global Initiative in 2010, which include the world's first plastic footprinting methodology, the Plastic Disclosure Project, and the Global Alert platform, allowing individuals to report trash hotspots anywhere in the world's waterways or coastlines. As efforts for creating circular economies and reduced plastic pollution impacts increase, so to do the value of the group's long-term insight and innovation in global thinking for programs that help to reduce our global plastic footprint. The group has been active in the discussions for the UN Plastic Treaty which is being negotiated through 2024, and was asked to speak at a side event for the INC3 Treaty talks in Nairobi on the topic of trade of plastic for recycling.
The group is one of the first NGOs in the world have worked with both UNEP and the World Bank on plastic pollution and ocean issues, and is the founder of the Plasticity Forum, first launched at the Rio+20 Earth Summit, and has since been held in 13 cities around the world, with the 2019 event co-hosted with UNEP in Bangkok at their Sea of Solutions Conference. The conference is one of the few that solely focuses on the solutions for second-life plastic, and where the leaders are going with solutions, innovations, and opportunities, for a world with a reduced waste footprint. Ocean Recovery Alliance works with companies, governments, multi-lateral institutions, universities and with education programs.
Programs and Projects
Water Rising and Water Falling Festivals
In 2018 we launched the bi-annual Water Falling Festival, and Water Rising Festival, to bring about waste reduction and improved awareness to villages in Cambodia along the Tonle Sap Lake. The lake rises and falls by up to 6 meters (20ft) each six months, and when this happens, plastic from the villages gets pulled to the lake, and then pushed back into the villages, harming community livelihoods with fishing, tourism, health and agriculture. Prior to our work, their only options where to dump, or burn the material outside of their homes. Our programmes are now endorsed by the local and provincial government, village chiefs, fishermen and even the monk community. We have impacted and engaged over 12,500 people since their inception, and after the pandemic, the program has developed to include monthly cleanup activities which support the local government's push for increased eco-tourism activities along the lake.
Inland Ocean Festival
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The Inland Ocean Festival in Cambodia Ocean Recovery Alliance and its partner NGO2 Bambooshoot Foundation in 2023 to celebrate Cambodia's "Inland Ocean" - the Tonle Sap Lake. The event was organized in collaboration with a traditional local monk festival to celebrate the rising waters of the lake and pending monsoon season, with over 10,000 local community visitors in attendance. The festival includes a large parade from Kampong Phluk to the shores of the lake with over 150 local high school students who participated in a baby puppet lantern making workshop to create illuminated lanterns which represent wildlife of the lake. The event celebrates water appreciation, pride for the outdoors, and engages the community in programs for reducing plastic pollution. We had over 15,000 visitors in the 2024 event, and appreciate Smart as our lead sponsor, bringing over 40 employees for the weekend, including riding on the inaugural 15km bike path route along the lake from Boeng Pearaing Bird Sanctuary to Kampong Phluk.
The 3rd annual Inland Ocean Festival will be held on June 7th and 8th, 2025, which also honors UN World Ocean Day. Join us for this amazing local eco-tourism event celebrating the lake.
Global Alert App
Our Global Alert App is one of the only tools in the world which allows people to report trash hotspots anywhere in the world's waterways or coastlines. Partly funded by the World Bank, and now available in English, Spanish and Bahasa Indonesian, you can "See - Share - Solve" with Global Alert to drive cleanup and pollution prevention and management programs in creeks, rivers and outflows where it is easier to stop the flow of plastic to the ocean, than once it gets into the ocean itself. Our innovative platform allows metrics to be captures so that stakeholders can better track and verify the locations, volumes of material collected and weather conditions, including the export of data for further activation and engagement for maintaining clean waterways and building trust with communities. Click below to see our short film, Streams of Plastic.
You can help support the Ocean by clicking here, as our innovative, creative and scalable programs are made possible because of your vision and engagement to help us expand our work. nes, use our Global Alert platform to take up to three photos of big sections of trash, so that stakeholders in that community can use your data to better manage and prevent litter from polluting our waters.
"Uncle Roo" - the Recycling Rooster
You can become involved with education in rural (or any) communities by supporting our play/puppet show, called "Uncle Roo - the Recycling Rooster". This is already in eigh languages, and we hope to have it in many more. The play is inspired by a rooster, as almost all villages of the world have roosters, and it is their crowing, or what we call "Eco-Repetition", which reminds people to recycle once they have seen the play and its hero, Uncle Roo. YOUR DONATION can support new performances around the world by helping with costumes and local travel for the show to be performed in other villages, towns or schools in the community. Once this is performed, videos of the performance can be uploaded to our Uncle Roo Youtube channel for others to see and learn from.
About Our Logo: "Design is about conception, projection, aspiration, ambition, well before being about drawing. As a matter of fact, the purpose of design is first and foremost to give shape to the actual raison d’être of an organization. To make it meaningful, visible, sentient, and if possible, emotional. A successful logo has the power to connect someone to something, by relating something to someone. In the light of the above, the visual identity of Ocean Recovery Alliance is just brilliant, in so many ways:
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Ocean is the focus: it is in great danger. The five rings in the logo represent the five largest oceans of the planet: Pacific, Atlantic, Indian, Southern and Arctic.
Recovery is the goal: it is now or never.
Alliance is the way: only a collective effort and lasting engagement can work.
Indeed, “to help improve our ocean environment” is the purpose of the organization, which makes it happen by bringing together “new ways of thinking, technologies, creativity and collaborations in order to introduce innovative projects and initiatives”. The number five is symbolic in the logo, as it represents the regenerative process and the potential for directing that energy towards a specific and defined goal of new creation, wisdom, balance, regeneration. The loop is closed. There are five oceans on Earth, but in reality, it is one body of water, and one ocean. There are five letters in the word “Ocean”. The logo contains five times the symbol of Oxygen which, as a component of water, is most of the mass of living organisms. Water which is the major constituent of lifeforms. There are also five circles here, which speak of Responsible Business and Sustainable Development #CircularAdvantage #Circularity2030, and also represent the "Olympics of the Ocean." - Pascal Beucler, Semiotician.