By Odyssey Innovation | Marine Plastic Pollution Experts
There's a bin on a beach near you.
It doesn't look like much. A simple receptacle, designed specifically for used fishing line. But behind it is four years of logistics, community relationships, council partnerships, and a quiet, unglamorous commitment to keeping plastic out of the sea.
We put it there. And we still service it — every single one, after four years.
That's who we are.
We Started Before "Eco" Was a Marketing Strategy
Odyssey Innovation was built on a simple but radical idea: that the plastic already in our oceans is a resource, not just a problem. That the right response to marine pollution isn't just awareness campaigns — it's action, infrastructure, and products that prove a circular economy is possible.
Over the past decade, we've worked with:
- Local councils across the UK coastline — embedding practical waste infrastructure into public spaces
- Beach clean organisations and community volunteer groups — providing tools, support, and structure to grassroots environmental action
- The EU Interreg Preventing Plastic Pollution (PPP) Project — a landmark collaboration bringing together over 18 organisations from across France and England to identify marine plastic hotspots, embed behaviour change in communities, and implement evidence-based solutions at a European policy level
- Private enterprises and corporate partners committed to meaningful CSR — not just carbon offsets, but hands-in-the-sand environmental stewardship
- Schools and educational institutions — building environmental literacy into the next generation before the habits form
- NGOs and third sector organisations — working at the systemic level to change the frameworks that allow pollution to happen in the first place
This isn't a portfolio of one-off collaborations. It's a decade of sustained, multi-level environmental engagement — from beach level to Brussels.
How It Started: Winning the Plymouth City Council Tender
The fishing line recycling programme didn't begin with a grand vision. It began with a tender.
Plymouth City Council — operating as part of the EU Interreg Preventing Plastic Pollution (PPP) Project — issued a competitive tender for a fishing line recycling initiative along the Plymouth coastline. The brief was clear: design, install, and maintain a network of recycling bins at key angling locations, and report outcomes back to Interreg as part of a broader cross-channel marine pollution reduction programme.
Odyssey Innovation won that tender. And we've been delivering on it ever since.
Working alongside specialist angling experts Benjamin Bassett of Ben Bassett Fishing and Stuart McLanaghan of Fish 21 — who brought deep knowledge of angler behaviour, gear loss patterns, and coastal fishing hotspots — we identified the locations where intervention would have the greatest impact, designed the bins, and built the servicing infrastructure from the ground up.
That was four years ago. Every bin is still standing. Every bin is still being serviced.
The Fishing Line Problem Nobody Was Solving
Discarded fishing line is one of the most damaging and least visible forms of marine plastic pollution. Unlike a plastic bottle or a carrier bag, monofilament line is nearly invisible in the water — and takes up to 600 years to break down. It entangles and kills sea creatures. It accumulates silently on the seabed. And until recently, there was almost nowhere to dispose of it responsibly at the point of use.
Anglers weren't littering out of indifference. They simply had no infrastructure. No bin. No system. No alternative.
So we built one.
What the PPP Project Taught Us About Scale
Our work within the EU Interreg Preventing Plastic Pollution (PPP) Project brought together over 18 organisations from across France and England in one of the most ambitious cross-border marine conservation initiatives of its kind.
The project's goals were clear: identify and target hotspots for plastic pollution, embed lasting behaviour change in local communities, and implement solutions that work at scale — not just in pilot programmes, but in the real world.
For Odyssey Innovation, this collaboration was formative. It confirmed what we'd always believed: that meaningful environmental impact requires multi-stakeholder commitment, long-term thinking, and the willingness to do the work that doesn't make headlines. Informing policy at a European level while simultaneously servicing bins on a beach in Plymouth — that's the full spectrum of what genuine environmental leadership looks like.
Why This Matters for Your Business
If you're a business looking to build a credible environmental programme — not just a sustainability page on your website, but something with measurable, verifiable impact — we understand that journey better than most.
We've worked with corporate partners across multiple sectors to design and deliver CSR programmes that are genuinely ocean-positive. From beach clean events to long-term plastic recovery partnerships, we bring the infrastructure, the expertise, and the track record.
Because the organisations we respect most aren't the ones with the best sustainability copy. They're the ones still showing up, four years later, to service the bins.
What We're Building Next
Our mission doesn't stop at fishing line. Every product we make — from our recycled marine plastic kayaks to our ocean conservation programmes — is part of the same commitment: to close the loop between the plastic we recover and the products we create.
If you want to be part of that — as a customer, a partner, a school, a council, or a business — we'd love to hear from you.
Odyssey Innovation is a UK-based marine innovation company specialising in recycled marine plastic products, ocean conservation programmes, and environmental education. Read our companion guide: Hook, Line & Responsibility: The Eco Angler's Guide →