World Ocean Day is always an important day in my calendar. It is my why. No matter what else is going on in our industry, my deep gratitude for the ocean and my determination to protect it from plastic pollution is what ground me. It is useful to remember my core mission is not to make more euros, but to make more impact - although euros keep the lights on!
I think most people now recognise that to solve plastic pollution, we have to start at the beginning. Because what we see in the ocean, plastic gyres, packaging washing up on beaches, trash entangling wildlife and destroying ecosystems, that is not the start of the story.
It’s only the part where we notice it. Plastic waste begins upstream, on land, in boardrooms, design studios and supply chains. For years, my work has been about bringing that reality into those decision-making spaces; translating what is happening in the ocean into something that resonates in business terms.
In the most recent years, that meant going even further upstream. Before the factory. To the money.
Through my role as an advisory board member with SWEN Blue Ocean, I joined their investor gathering on World Ocean Day. The idea is simple: if plastic pollution is shaped by business decisions, then those decisions are, in turn, shaped by investment. And if we want to change the system, we need to engage not only the companies producing and using plastic, but the capital that enables those choices in the first place.
In that setting, surrounded by investors and an impressive range of solutions, one thing to stood out clearly. There is no shortage of innovation. On the contrary, there is a growing appetite to fund technologies that address plastic pollution. Robotics, capture systems, advanced recycling solutions - these are compelling ideas. They are visible, they scale well in a pitch, and they create the sense that progress is being made. And, to a certain extent, they are necessary. And, it will never be enough.
Because if we continue to invest primarily in managing plastic once it has already become waste, we are treating the symptoms, not the cause. We are addressing what happens at the end of the system, while leaving the beginning fundamentally unchanged.
From a global financial perspective, that creates a troubling dynamic. We continue to fund the consequences of a system that still produces too much plastic and uses it too inefficiently, in the first place. The result is an ongoing cycle of costs: cleaning up, processing, and managing, without reducing the source of those costs.
The more impactful changes are often less visible, and therefore less sexy from a traditional investment perspective. Using less material. Designing packaging differently. Rethinking how products are delivered and retained in the system, including reuse models that keep value circulating rather than throwing it away.
These are business decisions that address inefficiencies. Less material means lower direct cost. Better design reduces exposure to regulatory pressure. More robust systems create resilience in supply chains that are otherwise increasingly volatile. These connections are becoming harder to ignore.
For a long time, many of the true costs of plastic were either externalised or hidden, but today they are moving into focus. Regulatory frameworks are evolving. Extended Producer Responsibility schemes are becoming more stringent. Companies are starting to feel the impact of packaging choices not only in sustainability reports, but in their cost structures.
Plastic was never truly cheap. It was simply under-accounted for.
This is where investors have a uniquely powerful role.
They are not only allocating capital to solutions; they are shaping the priorities and behaviour of the companies they invest in. And yet, packaging is still too often treated as a technical detail, rather than what it increasingly is: a strategic lever for cost, risk, and long-term value. Investors need to ask different questions. What is packaging really costing this business? Where are the hidden exposures? How resilient is the system we are funding?
If portfolio companies are not actively reducing their reliance on inefficient plastic systems, they are not just contributing to an environmental problem. They are carrying avoidable financial risk. They are throwing away money.
What we see in the ocean is the outcome of a system that was never designed to retain value. It was designed for convenience, speed, and short-term optimisation. Reframing plastic as a financial issue does not replace the environmental argument. It strengthens it. It connects the health of ecosystems to the health of businesses in a way that is harder to ignore.
On World Ocean Day, it is important to celebrate the ocean and all its wonders, and also to reflect on what damage we are causing. But if we want to change that story, we need to look beyond the waves.
Because in the end, every piece of plastic waste started as an investment decision.
And right now, far too much of that investment is still going to waste.
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