Public Funding for Claire Potter Design Ltd

The growth of marine plastics and the impacts it has on our oceans, aquatic life and our coastlines has now become embedded in wider public awareness. Reports, campaigns and behaviour change drives highlighting the issues of plastic ingestion and entanglement are reported almost daily. With plastics lasting in our oceans for up to 600 years, this issue is growing exponentially, yet as a raw material, ocean plastic could prove a valuable resource - rather than just being landfilled or incinerated once brought to land. This project seeks to investigate the opportunities for recovered marine plastic and fishing nets in Southern England - understanding the complex issues with the materials, including volume, contamination and how it impacts the fishers themselves, before subjecting the material to a series of innovative transformations. By creating adaptions to the open source Precious Plastics small-scale recycling model, new concept 'products' will be created to test not only the possibilities for the materials that can be replicated elsewhere in the UK, but the desirability of the material and the concept products in a commercial sense. What can be made, and essentially, who would buy what can be made?