Have a penchant for the marine environment? Fancy a style of vintage nautical nostalgia? Then United By Blue (UBB) is the clothing line for you. UBB is a brand of sustainable clothing and accessories that removes trash from oceans and beaches around the world.
Instead of donating cash to other conservation organizations, the company fervrently collects one pound of trash—mostly on waterways and beaches—for every product sold. Each cleanup involves a few hundred of those small loads at once; the company says it has pulled in nearly 83,000 pounds of rubbish to date. In just one year, United by Blue has successfully worked with over 1,000 volunteers at over 60 cleanups — imagine pulling 800 tires out of a single waterway!
These impressive statistics are only the beginning of the philosophy Brian Linton and his team want the world to embody.
“By associating the sale of each product with a pound of trash removed from oceans through company-organized and hosted cleanups, we show that it is in fact possible to both make a living and do the right thing. We do not write checks to other organizations to do our dirty work for us, we do it ourselves. We do not accept donations from individuals or corporations because we believe that conservation efforts, like any business model, should be self-sustaining. Instead of relying on generosity, we rely on organic cotton and creative designs. We rely on a weathered, vintage look inspired by the faded colors of harbor villages. We rely on that moment of discovering something forgotten, something beautiful, something from another time, and encapsulating these feelings in our products.”
Sign up to be part of one of the cleanups organized by United By Blue — you can also shop through their diverse range of products. After all, since each product purchased triggers the removal of one pound of rubbish from waterways, it’s the perfect time to give a holiday gift to your friends or yourself that ends up giving back to us all in the most wonderful of ways.
