PARTNERS IN SPIRIT: Clemens Feigl, CEO everwave
“Closing down is never an option for me.”
Clemens Feigl is CEO and co-founder of everwave, a company focussing on preventing plastic and waste from entering our oceans, especially through rivers. The strategy includes waste collection with smart technologies, innovative research and awareness work. The team is diverse, with environmentalists, engineers, biologists, economists and many more, all united by a shared commitment to protecting our planet's waters.
Kiel-Marketing: Lost containers and floating rubbish are a real danger for sailors at sea. 100 million tonnes of plastic waste are now floating in the oceans, with the volume of a rubbish truck's worth of plastic waste being added every minute. What can be done about it?
Clemens Feigl: There are many ways to do something about it. There are actually four levels.
The first level is the individual level, where you look in your own household to see what alternatives are available. The way we consume has a huge impact on what is produced. If the demand for products decreases, there will be less plastic on the shelves in the future.
The second level is the companies, which is a very big lever. Packaging design, especially the use of mixed plastics, is a major challenge for recycling. Black plastics or mixed plastics are difficult to recycle. Companies have to ask themselves: How do I package my product sensibly?
The third level concerns companies that cannot do without packaging. They must assume what is known as Extended Producer Responsibility, EPR. The responsibility does not end with the sale of a product, it must encompass its entire life cycle. We have created a problem for ourselves and now have to clean up the last 20 years.
The fourth level and, in my view, the biggest lever is politics. Laws that stipulate the use of recycled materials in products or more bans on single-use plastic and the topic of EPR. In many countries, companies are already supporting local projects that then clean up again. This does not yet exist in Germany.
A start that has now turned into 1.7 million kilograms ...
We were founded in 2018 and collected our first kilogramme of waste in August 2020. It's been quite a journey to get there. We had to test technologies, find locations that suited us and find good local partners. That all took over two years. To date, we have collected 1.7 million kilograms and the growth is exponential because we are constantly improving. That makes me confident that our share of the drop is getting bigger and bigger every day.
According to your website, you use "smart technologies and innovative research". How do you find the rubbish? And where do you start?
We have built up quite a good brand worldwide. There are always local organisations that don't get beyond a manual clean-up once or twice a year. But if they are committed people, they look for support in the international network. For example, we have been asked if we could come to Cambodia with one of our boats. We then get in touch and do some scouting. Does our technology fit? What are the partners like? What is the infrastructure like for the collected waste? After an evaluation, we make a well-considered decision.
So you have to concentrate on very promising projects, at least for now.
We only have a limited number of boats, currently three. The technology you mentioned is then used on site. We use drones with an image recognition algorithm. They fly over a region and using the algorithm, i.e. artificial intelligence, we can analyse the images and recognise where we find which composition of waste. We identify the waste hotspots so that we can deploy our boats as efficiently as possible.
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“There are requests on all continents, we just can't provide support everywhere because we don't have enough capacity.”
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Kiel-Marketing: Are there certain countries that are already particularly active?
There are actually people in every country who are committed to it. It's really nice to see. Small NGOs or private individuals who walk on the beach for an hour every day and collect rubbish. The awareness is there globally. But the question is how to scale it up globally. We had a very good feeling about the team in Cambodia. But 2021 was a challenging situation during Corona, with many travel restrictions. In addition, the ship will only be at sea for three months. That's a risk for us: three months out of action, and if it doesn't work out, three months back, that all costs money. Fortunately, our partner Kühne und Nagel supports us and the transport costs us nothing. There are requests on all continents, we just can't provide support everywhere because we don't have enough capacity.
If you can recognise so well with your technical means where the waste piles up and how it is composed, couldn't you also determine exactly which company it comes from and work with the authorities to tackle it directly?
That's a very good idea. The algorithm is trained in such a way that we can identify over 20 different types of plastic. For example, we can say this is a PET bottle, this is a plastic bag made of LDPE [low-density polyethylene], there are many different types of plastic and more are being added all the time. Unfortunately, we haven't yet identified the producers, but there are studies on who the biggest polluters are. If you had to name them off the top of your head, you'd probably come up with eight out of ten: Coca Cola, Pepsi, Nestlé and so on and so forth. But the commitment of the companies is manageable compared to what they cause.
For example, if we find six million plastic bottles in a reservoir, we go to the government with this information and say, watch out, we have 80 per cent PET bottles, if you want to get the problem under control, introduce a deposit system. If this is done, I can promise you that the situation will have improved significantly two years later.
But a recycling infrastructure is expensive, and companies only invest if the business case works. That's exactly what we want to deliver. With our data, we make market entry more calculable for companies.
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“As world recycling champions, we assume that the majority of our waste is recycled. But this is not the reality.”
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You distinguish between four steps: Detect, Collect, Recycle, Inspire. So Inspire means two paths, towards the company and towards the individual?
One hundred per cent. Our interview now, being on stage, podcasts, we do that to raise awareness, because it's clear that we won't be able to solve the problem with boats in the future, we have to change something in society's consumer behaviour. We now have over 100 corporate partners. Of course we talk to them about such things. We have a network, we have consultancy agencies for packaging problems. Just cleaning up is not enough, which is why recycling is also an issue.
We have set up sorting facilities in Cambodia and Thailand, where local labour also works for us. This also has great social benefits, as we create jobs. Collect and recycle go hand in hand. It is very challenging for us to always think so holistically, but for us it is not enough to look at just one of these aspects.
There was an article recently about plastic caps on bottles that can no longer be removed. A discussion that surprised me. If this is an issue, I wonder how difficult it is to convince people to change their behaviour completely. Isn't that sometimes frustrating?
It's most frustrating in Germany and other westernised, more affluent regions, at least from my point of view. As world recycling champions, we assume that the majority of our waste is recycled. But that is not the reality. We are far removed from the figures that are officially communicated; we export a great deal of waste, for example to Malaysia or Turkey. In view of these obvious shortcomings, I find it difficult to understand why issues such as speed limits on motorways often receive more attention than the pressing environmental problems. In view of the global challenges, these discussions are unfortunately not very effective.
Are people overwhelmed? The world is becoming increasingly complex, unpredictable and volatile, climate change and plastic waste are something that many people no longer have on their radar because they feel other problems are more pressing. When it comes to this topic, people shut down relatively quickly as if in a survival reflex.
That's exactly how I see it, there are two answers. For me personally, closing down is never an option. No matter how big the problem is, someone has to start solving it. The only thing I have to do is invest a little time and ask myself: is what I've been doing for 20 years still up to date? I can decide for myself how I use my time, what I do and where. Starting somewhere with a small part is already something.
You already have many companies on board and the team has grown since the company was founded, how do you finance yourselves?
There are currently more than 40 of us worldwide, the majority of whom are working on projects abroad. Our goal from the start was to build a functioning business model, we didn't want to be dependent on donations. And we have succeeded in doing so. We work with companies worldwide, around 100 partners who want to take responsibility. For example, they can measure their waste footprint or that of a product. For example, they bring 100 tonnes onto the market every year but don't know where the waste ends up. But they want to take responsibility and commission everwave to collect this waste elsewhere. For one euro that a company gives us, we collect one kilogramme of waste, which also includes the sorting process. So with this one euro, we also invest in the local infrastructure, in local jobs. And that works quite well.
At the Kiel Week [the Kiel Week is the largest sailing event in the world] you worked with the Kiel-based company HASYTEC [Ultrasonic antifouling for ships] worked together. What did you do there?
Together with HASYTEC and Torqeedo from Bavaria [electric motors for boats] , we collected two kilograms of waste from waters around the world for every nautical mile sailed during Kiel Week. That was perfect for everyone, the two companies had a super cool story to tell, both on site and via their media channels. So the company also got something out of it, namely visibility in the area of sustainability. Why not talk about it when you're doing something good?
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“So they always have interesting stories to tell and, for example, content for a specially created landing page.”
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How does the cooperation with MyMuesli work? They also cooperate with you and have a "Save the Ocean Muesli" on offer.
MyMuesli is a very good example. They have spent a long time working internally on how to make the packaging plastic-free. They are very open about the fact that not using plastic significantly shortens the best-before date of their products. So the question is: am I producing food waste or plastic waste? The answer is understandable, that they need to make their product last longer. But then MyMuesli said, okay, we can't change that at the moment. We offset our waste via everwave - and so they have already collected over 240,000 kilos of waste with us. The order is: please collect it elsewhere. They always have interesting stories to tell and, for example, content for a specially created landing page. This is also a great way to involve consumers.
One last highlight that you recently posted on LinkedIn: a collaboration with Paulaner in Singapore. Why don't you tell us what happened there ...
(laughs)... yes, we mainly have projects in Southeast Asia and that will continue to be our target market because eight out of ten polluted rivers in the world are in Southeast Asia. We now wanted to see whether we could also attract companies from the region. At the time, there was a programme run by the German government that enabled start-ups to enter the Singapore market. We took part in the programme last year and it was great. I actually got to know the head of the brewery there during the programme - and she immediately said, oh, that's great, let's make a New Wave Beer. The slogan is "sip & save our rivers", so it's also cool to communicate and encouraging. People are involved. It looks mega. Still makes me incredibly proud. A brewery puts your logo on its own bottles, that's their highest brand asset.
Now the world-famous Ocean Race is coming to Kiel in August 2025 with the combination of sailing and marine conservation, and many partner companies are also on board with an interest in demonstrating their commitment to sustainability.
I think there are few better occasions to combine this, because sailors are aware of the problem of waste in the oceans. This awareness-raising offers companies the opportunity to position themselves positively and tell an extraordinary story.
The Ocean Race is also a super inspiring platform for us. Perhaps there will be another cooperation, such as one kilo of rubbish per nautical mile sailed. Or maybe one of the team sponsors would like to take us on board and make us visible. We are super flexible, we just want to make a positive contribution and give companies the opportunity to be visible with their commitment.
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The interview was conducted by Ralf Löwe, Communication & Commercial The Ocean Race Europe/Kiel
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Clemens Feigl on LinkedIn
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