The Ocean Cleanup teams up with Coldplay for new rPET LP

However, a unique mission requires unique partnerships – and Coldplay were keen to find new ways to use the plastic we have intercepted. Once the band contacted Boyan Slat, Founder and CEO of The Ocean Cleanup, to ask about turning our plastic into an LP, we got to work.

From material to music

Turning plastic garbage into a functioning and high-quality record is not an easy process. First, you can’t use just any plastic trash: these records must be made specifically from PET. This meant we can’t use the ocean plastic we extract from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (which is mostly HDPE, LDPE and PP) – we’d have to look to our network of river Interceptors to find the right stuff.

But that’s not all: to ensure the required sound quality for Coldplay’s music, the plastic must be as clean and free of imperfections as possible. There was only one Interceptor which could provide the required large quantiy of sufficient-quality PET: Interceptor 006 in Guatemala, which has been preventing tsunamis of trash flooding into the Caribbean Sea since deployment in summer 2023.

Once the plastic was intercepted in the Rio Las Vacas, our partner Biosfera GT set up a separate sorting process to set aside the best-quality PET. This was then passed to Compuestos y Derivados for processing into flakes: the start of the process of converting this plastic from waste into valuable and usable material.

The plastic flakes were then shipped to the Netherlands, where Morssinkhof continued processing the material to create granulate – the key ingredient for an LP. Once process, the material was passed to manufacturer Sonopress to put the pieces together and make the record.

The sound of silence

The challenges didn’t end there. A quality-sounding LP cannot be created using only our river plastic: it must be blended with other recycled plastic to deliver the high standards we seek in order to ensure our plastic never returns to the marine environment.

The toughest challenge was finding the right blend between our river plastic and the smaller proportion of other recycled plastic. The key question was: what is the maximum percentage of river plastic we can use in the LP while still ensuring perfect sound quality?

After long periods of testing and collaboration, our partners identified the sweet spot: each limited edition LP will consist of 70% PET river plastic, all removed from the Rio Las Vacas and passed through a traceable and sustainable supply chain. This is currently the maximum percentage we can use while maintaining quality. The smaller proportion of the plastic in these LPs is recycled waste plastic PET bottles from other sources.

When we were able to play our newly-produced ‘blank’ LP (before any music has been cut) and hear perfect silence – we knew we had found the right blend, and that our material was ready to bring Coldplay’s new album to life.

A mission without limits

We’ve shown we can remove large quantities of plastic – but completing our mission requires more. We have to work with others to create value from this plastic trash and ensure it is managed and processed responsibly, never again returning to the water.

Innovative and progressive partners of all kinds – such as Coldplay – are essential to our mission. We have now caught millions of kilograms of plastic, and we require supportive partners who can make use of the unique qualities of our material and work with us to find innovative solutions to plastic pollution.

The Notebook Edition of Moon Music is the first time we have used our plastic to create a new product alongside our partners – but this is only the start. We are working hard with Coldplay and all our partners to find new ways to give our catch a new life and make sure the plastic we remove never returns to the ocean.

www.theoceancleanup.com   www.coldplay.com