Page 105 - EarthHeroes

First Pete shrank his design and made a mini-Seabin in plastic using
a 3D printer. He added a mini-pump and installed the device in a fish
tank for testing. Once they were sure this worked, the team made a full-
sized version. To save money, Pete learned how to weld metal by watching videos and bought an old sewing machine to stitch his own catch bags from natural fibre. He kept improving the design, reducing the number of parts so that the Seabin could be produced easily in a factory. It felt like the perfect job, using his skills to create something that would help protect the ocean he loved. And living by the sea meant he could go surfing in his breaks. But by the end of that year the team had completely run out of money.
As they didn’t want to accept funding from companies that were often contributing to the pollution problem, they decided to try to ‘crowdfund’ enough money to keep their Seabin dream alive by asking online for donations from people who liked their idea. They needed to raise $250,000. They made a video, and soon their sponsorship request ‘went viral’ – with thousands, then millions, of viewers. Slowly, their fundraising total crept up. But less than a week before the end of the campaign, they were still $100,000 short. If they didn’t hit their target, they wouldn’t get any of the money that had been offered. Pete barely slept as he spent night and day contacting anyone who might possibly help. His hard work paid off. On the last day, they smashed their target, raising $267,000. They were proud that it was ordinary people – mums, dads and kids – who were giving them the chance to make the Seabin a reality.
There was much work to do to complete the working prototype, while also responding to hundreds of emails a day from people who had heard about the Seabin and wanted to buy one. But the hardest thing for barefoot, T-shirt-and- shorts-wearing surfer Pete was learning how to be a businessman. He often
felt he was asking silly questions during meetings with companies who were interested in making their product, and sometimes even had to look things up on his phone to understand what they were saying. Happily, though, in March 2016, they struck a deal with a French company, Poralu Marine, to make the Seabins.
In June 2016, the first working Seabin was installed in Majorca. And over the following months the team travelled across Europe to set up Seabins in six ‘pilot’ locations. These were marinas and ports that wanted to be the first to have Seabins and had agreed to help test them. By November 2017, the testing was complete and the team were ready to sell their invention to a long waiting list of customers from all over the world.
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