Parley teamed up with HEROES to transform Ocean Plastic® into 50,000 reusable PPE items for front-line healthcare workers fighting COVID-19

This image and header image by Eddy Frank Vásquez.

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has brought a parallel crisis of plastic pollution. An estimated 16 million PPE items have been thrown away every day across UK hospitals during the pandemic. Masks and gloves designed to save lives are polluting the ecosystems that make life possible. To protect frontline workers and the oceans, Parley teamed up with HEROES, a charity founded by and for NHS workers, for a world-first collaboration that will bring recycled and reusable PPE visors to UK health workers and NGOs in the Dominican Republic. Uniting imperative environmental and humanitarian causes, this initiative combines the impact of our community-led global cleanup efforts with the HEROES health workers volunteer network in the UK to produce crucial eye-protection with a focus on eco-innovation and conservation.

To create the shields, raw materials were sourced from plastic intercepted in the Dominican Republic and made into plastic sheets before being cut into shape and finally paired with a 3D printed headband at Makerversity in London. This process was managed and funded end-to-end by HEROES.

Unlike existing single-use varieties, these visors, produced using Parley Ocean Plastic®, are designed to be completely reusable, providing indefinite protection. In a unique life cycle, marine plastic waste collected from the shorelines of the Dominican Republic will be transformed into up-cycled PPE visors and soon returned back to the DR to offer aid and protection to the country's frontline workers. The visors are made with more robust 350-micron material, which allows them to maintain a longer lifespan and survive cleaning processes, versus its single-use PPE counterparts.

The environmental impact of PPE on the environment and marine habitats is significant and will continue to worsen, especially as lockdown measures are reduced and businesses reopen using PPE on a daily basis.

Due to strict public health measures in the UK, some medical-grade PPE can only be used once to avoid the risk of contamination and the spread of infectious diseases, meaning used PPE products are incinerated at extremely high temperatures and emit unwanted gases. For non-medical grade PPE, which is typically made from polypropylene (a fossil-fuel derived plastic), countless used and discarded products are ending either in landfills or in waterways and oceans, threatening the immediate and long-term health of sea life and natural ecosystems. With an ever-increasing focus on eco-innovation, sustainability, combating climate change and achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, this partnership will help protect public health and the environment at the same time.

“My personal experience during shifts in intensive care was that eyewear was a surprising area of shortage and I soon realised that throwing away single-use items meant we had even less available, and equally that we were creating a shocking amount of waste. I used one of the visors we’ve created with Parley throughout my shifts in the COVID ICU for six weeks with it showing no signs of wearing out, and I think this will be a breath of fresh air to NHS staff.”

— Dr Dominic Pimenta, Co-Founder of HEROES

Parley has donated 2.28 metric tons of Ocean Plastic® pellets (equivalent to more than 230,000 plastic bottles intercepted in Dominican Republic) to HEROES for the cause, and in association with SHIELD, its sister PPE organization, will oversee the production and distribution of 50,000 visors, ensuring half ends up in the hands of doctor surgeries, general practices, dentists, pharmacists, and care homes across the UK. Half of the recycled PPE will be returned to Parley, and later distributed to NGOs and hospitals in the Dominican Republic. During the process, HEROES successfully connected and funded all third-party manufacturers, including London-based Makerversity, who designed and manufactured the headband section using 70 three-dimensional printers.

HEROES is dedicated to supporting the welfare and wellbeing of those fighting to keep the nation healthy and safe during the COVID-19 crisis and beyond, by providing all NHS staff with access to sustainable PPE gear, physical and mental health services, as well as ensuring their day-to-day needs and livelihoods can be maintained in the best possible way. The organization focuses on three key areas; sustainable PPE products and its access to NHS workers, food delivery through existing infrastructure and providing human health and well-being services such as childcare, therapy and support grants.