Episode 39 – Rob Thompson of Odyssey Innovation

Catherine Weetman talks to Rob Thompson from Plymouth in the south-west of England, who is an Multi-award winning Innovator, a Marine Conservationist, a Marine Litter Recycling Specialist, and a Social Entrepreneur.

Rob realised the critical and increasing problem of plastic pollution in the oceans, and started doing clean-ups in his kayak. During these clean-ups, he realised there were three recurring obstacles:

• How to access the inaccessible coves, estuaries and other areas not frequented by the regular beach cleaners;
• How to dispose of the plastic we generated through our clean-up operations;
• How to fund the running costs of doing this.

Rob came up with a way of combining the elements of all three problems with circular economy principles, and launched Odyssey Innovation to recycle marine plastic into kayaks and other products.

We hear about Rob’s progress in making all those connections and setting up collaboration opportunities with recycling companies, the local government and its recycling teams, with the fishing industry, and organizations like the Ocean Recovery Project and the Paddle for Plastic campaign. Odyssey Innovation is now working with quite a few harbours around the south-west, and as Rob said, they’d like to expand to other areas of the UK.

Rob has created a brilliant circular model (using plastic waste to help collect more plastic waste!) and found ways to tap into or set up viable recycling routes for many of the wide range of plastics getting into the oceans.