Leading travel gear manufacturer Pacsafe has just launched a limited-edition collection made from ECONYL®, a sustainable yarn woven out of consumer wastes including discarded fishing nets.
As anyone remotely interested in the environment would be well aware, plastic pollution is a problem that Hong Kong has been struggling with for decades. Over the period 2016-2017 alone, local NGO Green Earth estimated a staggering 5.2 million plastic bottles were discarded Hong Kong every day, a sizeable portion of which found their way into the South China Sea through the Pearl River Delta.
According to Patrick Yeung Chung-wing, a project manager at WWF Hong Kong, “Hong Kong’s marine litter problem is quite serious, especially at remote beaches which people seldom visit and clean up. About 80 per cent of our marine litter is plastic, especially disposable products such as plastic bottles, plastic bags and packaging material.”
In light of this, Pacsafe’s initiative towards ocean conservation can be considered a crucial step in the right direction. Taking inspiration from the ‘turtle’ logo on their travel gear, Pacsafe founded the Pacsafe Turtle Fund back in 2014 and has since provided over HK$1.2 million in grants for sea turtle conservation projects.
“The vision of the Pacsafe Turtle Fund is to help create a world where marine turtles thrive in healthy oceans the world over, safe against the threat of extinction. It’s not just about giving funds to an important cause, but also using the value of turtle conservation to filter through everything we do and inspire our efforts to improve how we do business,” says Pacsafe co-founder and CEO Rob Schlipper.
So to mark the 20th anniversary of the brand, the brand has launched two limited-edition bags – the Vibe 28L ECONYL® backpack and the Travelsafe® 3L ECONYL® portable safe, with 100% of profits going to Pacsafe Turtle Fund, to help conserve our planet’s most intrepid explorer from a plasticy hell!
Text: Suchetana Mukhopadhyay