Our Business Plan

Harvest. Transport. Recycle. Repeat. Grow.

We will locate our harvesting fleet across the lower, narrowest part of the Yangtze River just before it expands to form the Yangtze Delta, leaving openings for ingress and egress for river traffic. Want to see our pitch deck and read our business plan and financial model? Email us at ted@saveouroceansinitiative.com

Harvesting Plastic Waste

A special kind of fleet

Our initial harvesting fleet consists of four 19-meter harvesting boats, eight 19-foot skiffs with 115 HP motors, and one 180-foot landing craft/RORO to gather the harvested plastic from our collection boats and deliver it to our recycling center.

Each harvesting boat works with a pair of 150-foot American-made specialized purse-string-style nets with a 26-foot drop to catch the plastic waste below the surface. Each net will be paired with its own skiff and a 3,000-pound winch to control the nets and pull the purse tight to trap the waste. Unlike fishing, where you must search for the fish the net encircles a school, our boats will run nets out on both sides of the harvesting boats in a straight 150-foot drag line. The initial harvesting fleet will work 12-hours per day, 365 days a year.

Four harvesting boats and eight skiffs, each with two 150-foot nets on both port and starboard sides, will act like a floating blockade across the river, while leaving open spaces to allow for the free flow of traffic up and down river. The skiffs along with the winches pull the purse-net tight to trap the plastic within, then the skiffs guide the full nets alongside the harvesting boats, where they will be attached to the side of the boat. Then the transfer ship picks them up, empties the net into a modified 20-foot container on the deck of the transfer ship, and returns the nets to the collection boats, where the process begins all over again.

Due to the swift currents and the massive amount of waste the river carries to the sea (171 tons per hour), it will not take long to fill the nets many times, over the course of 12 hours.

Transporting the Waste

A continuous cycle

Full nets will be picked up by our transport vessels using a small 5-ton crane, then released into a 20-foot modified shipping container on the decks of our transfer ship. The emptied nets are returned to the harvesting vessels, while the collected plastic waste is transported to our recycling/processing center for sorting, shredding, and manufacturing into commercially viable plastic shipping pallets. This is a continuous cycle.

The 20-foot container will be modified by opening the top and then placing it on the deck of our transfer ship. Once our fully loaded transfer ship reaches the recycling center, a 30-ton long-reach crane will lift the container to the dock, where a 30-ton container-forklift will pick up the containers and take them to the sorting pits.

The container will have an independent custom built hydraulic ram to condense the waste, much like a garbage truck does, and then push the plastic waste into the sorting pits. The emptied container is then returned to the transport-ship and the collection begins all over again.

Processing & Recycling Plastic Waste

Land-based operations to optimize efficiency.

SOOI will build a recycling/processing center on the bank of the Lower Yangtze River, close to the Chongming Bridge in Shanghai. The recycling operation will consist of 4 acres of commercial land, with an option for an additional 120 acres to accommodate our aggressive expansion and growth. This is a 3,000 square-meter concrete foundation with a two-story covered roof and a security fence. We will start with one large custom-built shredder capable of shredding up to 50 tons per day of all plastic marine waste. The sorting pits will be built between the front of the recycling center and the river. This is where the plastic and other waste items are sorted and transported via a conveyor belt system to the shredders.

This is also where the fish are sorted and distributed to our workers and held for locals at no cost.

SOOI will sort the plastic waste into categories: a) clear, b) colored plastic bottles, c) discarded fishing nets, and d) all other mixed junk plastic waste, glass and aluminum. These are then delivered to land-based processing centers on a nearby riverbank. All separate waste, as mentioned, will be routed to custom-built, patented shredders, then to our injection molding machines where the pallets are made. More on that below.

SOOI will utilize its patented and proprietary formulas developed by SOOI founder and Chairman, Mr. Ted J. Staley and his company Eco Safe Solutions Ltd. which was in the MSW and hazardous and toxic waste industry for over a decade.

All existing plastic shipping pallets contain heavy metals such as arsenic, cadmium, chromium(VI), and lead because new polymers contain these heavy metals.

Our patented and proprietary formulas will reduce all of the heavy metals made from new polymers, recycled or not, by over 99% and reduce arsenic to below detectable levels.

SOOI pallets will be inert, nontoxic with all heavy metals neutralize and SOOI will be marketed as Seapal©.

Side benefits of our processes is that the pallets we treat will become stronger and fire resistant.

These benefits will set our pallets apart from all existing plastic shipping pallets made anywhere in the world which will give SOOI an unprecedented market advantage.

We will also build worker housing adjoining the recycling center that will comfortably house up to 70 employees. This operating facility, including all worker houses and other buildings and equipment, will be powered by local power and augmented with solar panels with hydrogen power cells. Each of the harvesting ships and all of the skiffs also have solar panels to power the LED night lights and stabilizing electric propellers.

Repeat & Grow

Net profits will fund expansion

Monies will be reinvested to add more boats to our fleet, as well as more manufacturing equipment and infrastructure. Additionally, more waterways will be harvested, as operational progress and revenues make it possible. Growth is our top priority, because with growth comes the harvesting of far more waste, into the millions of tons per year.

It is our long-term goal to have a meaningful worldwide presence and collect nearly all river-borne plastic waste before it reaches and destroys our oceans. With the success of our first operations, we hope to inspire others to take up the call and utilize our process -- which we will share openly -- to help us reach the overriding goal of eliminating plastic waste from all oceans -- and saving our ocean and planet in the process. Not just wildlife, but humanity, too.

Plastic Shipping Pallets

We complete the circle of harvesting and recycling plastic waste from rivers before it can reach the open seas, then convert that plastic waste into commercially viable plastic shipping pallets. It is estimated that there are 60 billion trees in the world; 300 million trees are being cut and consumed every year; 20% of these trees are used to produce wooden shipping pallets; over 5 billion shipping pallets are manufactured each year, and 90% of these are wooden; at the current rate, if this practice is not drastically reduced within 50 years, we will have lost over 25% of all the forests of the world.

Pallets are a worldwide market of almost inexhaustible opportunity. SOOI believes it has several distinct market advantages over Chinese and all other plastic pallet fabricators:

SOOI believes that most--if not all--U.S. and European companies doing business from China would prefer to buy their pallets from a company that is western-owned, and also not only using recycled plastic waste to make their pallets, but at the same time saving the world’s oceans by harvesting its raw material from the Yangtze River and other the top polluting rivers of the world. Also, if given the choice, as long as the quality, service, and price were all comparable to (or better than) the Chinese manufacturers, these companies would buy from SOOI. The fact that our pallets will be the only pallets made anywhere in the world that are truly environmentally friendly with all of the heavy metals neutralized and rendered inert and non-toxic will give SOOI a Hugh market advantage.
Everyone knows that plastic pallets have many advantages over wood pallets for a myriad of reasons, not to mention the environmental advantages of saving trees. The plastic pallets proposed by SOOI will not just be made from plastic waste, but from recycled plastic river waste that because of SOOI’s intervention will never have a chance to pollute our oceans. Our injection molding systems can make plastic shipping pallets from unsorted plastic waste to meet any designs or specifications.

We will produce in the first year of operation nearly 1,000,000 plastic shipping pallets. This will add millions of dollars in profit per year to our bottom line, in just the first year alone.