AFP video team visits #tide Thailand for international news report

A reporter and film crew from the international news agency AFP (Agence France Press) recently visited our team in Thailand to learn more about plastic pollution along coastlines and our new approach to collecting, tracking and processing plastic waste.

During their visit, the reporters toured our facilities in Ranong, where our team sorts the plastic and gets the material ready for further processing. They interviewed our staff on site, among them operations director Nirattisai Ponputi and project manager Capucine Paour who told them about the practical challenges our staff faces every day while sorting through mountains of plastic waste. Sometimes encountering within one product various different types of plastic that are hard to identify.

Next, the reporters accompanied our team to Koh Chang, an island about 30 minutes away from Ranong by speedboat. On Koh Chang, #tide was able to build a warehouse to store the plastic that's collected by local waste pickers. The warehouse now has become sort of an impromptu central waste management facility for all plastic on this island.

Among the people who collect plastic on a regular basis for #tide is Wiranuch Scimone, age 54. In her 20 years on Koh Chang, she has seen the waste washing ashore go from mostly fishing nets to huge amounts of unrecyclable polystyrene foam that locals often end up burning.

From the coasts and islands in the Andaman Sea in Thailand, the AFP went to the Netherlands next. Here they toured a factory from our partner Condor Group to see, what happens with the plastic that #tide has collected, sorted and recycled.

Condor is Europe's biggest manufacturer of carpets, using our ocean-bound plastic to produce sustainable carpets. And the reporters were able to talk to Jan Hoekman Jr., one of Condor's Directors.

"Tide is really unique," said Hoekman, "you can follow the product from collection to the final products, which you see here. Transparency is very important if you talk about sustainability."

"We see sustainability not just as a trend, but more as stewardship for future generations."
Jan Hoekman Jr., Condor Group

The AFP report was featured in many media outlets, among them the renowned American Finance and Business Magazine "Barron's" or Singapore based news platform "Channel NewsAsia".

Here's a conclusion from Taiwan Plus (see the video above), who featured the story in their daily newscast: "By combining old-fashioned labour with cutting-edge technology, start-ups like #tide are trying to make an impact on a seemingly intractable problem. And if these efforts are successful, it could be a new wave in a sea of plastic."