“Today, stories about trouble in the world – conflict, economic uncertainty, and environmental worries – are very familiar. But that’s not the whole story of us. There’s an entire world of things that are going right: breakthrough, evolution, innovation, and people like you who rise to the occasion.”
-Colleen Cassity, Vice President, Oracle Social Impact
In 1869 when the first synthetic plastic was invented, its purpose was to replace ivory in the manufacturing of billiard balls. In fact, it was created—at least in part—to protect wild elephants. It was also cheaper than ivory. Since then, the use of this material has rapidly accelerated to touch nearly every aspect of our lives. Today, more than 400 million tons of plastic pollution occurs annually, with far reaching consequences for our bodies, ecosystems, and planet.
At Oracle, we recognize the tremendous opportunity and responsibility we have to invest and innovate toward a plastic-free world, and we strive vigorously toward creating that future. In honor of Earth Day 2024 and its theme, Plastics vs. the Planet, we sat down with Colleen Cassity, Vice President, Oracle Social Impact to glean insights into the synergistic interplay between our technology, philanthropic endeavors, and the concerted efforts of our employees in tackling the plastics crisis, and above all, how the impact of our individual actions, big and small, collectively serve as a pivotal force for positive change.
What is Oracle Social Impact? How does your work help protect the environment?
Oracle has a long history of positive environmental and social impact – more than 30 years’ worth. Social Impact is the philanthropic branch of our company, and we focus our work in four areas: environment, education, community, and health. We work to equip nonprofits, NGOs, and other organizations with the resources they need to create real, meaningful, and measurable change for the better.
Our environmental grants total about 1.2 million dollars annually, but we don’t think of them in a siloed way. By protecting biodiversity in the water and on land, connecting youth with nature, teaching environmental science, cleaning up our communities, and driving toward a zero-waste future, our grants to protect the environment naturally interconnect with our grants to advance education, strengthen communities, and promote health. At Oracle, we understand the interconnectedness of all things.
Tell us more about Oracle’s environmental grants.
One of our longest, deepest relationships is with the National Geographic Society and their enormously impactful Pristine Seas program.
We know that the ocean is essential to life on earth, and its health is integral to the functioning of our planet. Among other things, Pristine Seas’ global expeditions study and research our ocean’s ecosystems—those that are healthy and thriving, as well as those in distress. Pristine Seas’ team of scientists, policy experts, and filmmakers are helping to preserve vital ocean areas and protect threatened marine ecosystems from destructive human activity, such as overfishing and pollution. Working with local communities, indigenous peoples, governments, and partners, the Pristine Seas team reports that it has already inspired the creation of 27 marine protected areas, covering more than 6.6 million square kilometers—an area twice the size of India. The goal is to catalyze the global community to protect at least 30 percent of the ocean by 2030, contributing to a global movement called 30×30 aimed at stabilizing our planet for the near-term. Oracle began funding Pristine Seas when it was established in 2008 and we’re steadfast in our support of this astonishingly effective effort.
But more is needed, and while nations and business leaders must take action to achieve the 30×30 goal, you don’t need to be a head of state or a CEO to help. Simply by taking action and encouraging others to do the same, you can initiate change. With 14 million tons of plastic entering our oceans every year, engaging with individuals, communities, corporations, and supply chains is critical to inspire behavioral shifts. Margaret Mead is famous for saying, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed individuals can change the world. In fact, it’s the only thing that ever has.” And that’s true, but we cannot stay small, we need to go big. We all need to help. There’s no time to waste.
“Margaret Mead is famous for saying, ‘Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed individuals can change the world. In fact, it’s the only thing that ever has.’ And that’s true, but we cannot stay small, we need to go big. We all need to help. There’s no time to waste.”
How is Oracle philanthropy combating plastics in the ocean?
Ocean trash, especially plastic, wreaks havoc on marine habitats and poses a deadly threat to wildlife. Another longtime Oracle grantee, The Marine Mammal Center (TMMC), is helping in powerful ways. Each year, they respond to more than 15,000 reports of distressed marine mammals, many of which are entangled. Entanglement occurs when plastic packing straps, big rubber bands used on crab pots, and fishing gear such as monofilament lines and nets become wrapped around an animal, weighing it down, hampering its movement, injuring it, often causing it to starve or drown. Fishing nets are among the worst villains in this story. Made of nylon, a plastic that does not decompose, nets lost at sea continue to catch fish and other animals for many years.
Globally, it’s estimated that 300,000 cetaceans—whales, dolphins, and porpoises—die every year from entanglement in ocean trash and fishing gear that’s largely made of plastic. And for every entangled whale reported, approximately 10 more go unreported. Now, here’s the good news: expert first responders from TMMC are saving lives and helping others to do the same. While Oracle has funded TMMC’s overall work to rescue, rehabilitate, and return marine mammals to the wild since 2009, over the last several years we’ve concentrated on supporting their Global Response Initiative, which disentangles cetaceans along the California coast. This initiative also provides training and technical assistance to likeminded organizations around the world. It also drives research to prevent future entanglements, as well as ship strikes, and it engages stakeholders locally and globally. For long-lived animals like whales that are slow to mature and slow to reproduce, the loss of just one individual can have a population-level impact. That means every individual marine mammal we save makes a huge impact as well.
To all of the above, add art.
If you visit The Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito, California, you’ll see an art installation titled, The Ghost Below. It’s made of 450lbs of ghost net— nylon nets that are abandoned, lost, or discarded in the ocean—that were retrieved from the belly of a sperm whale. It’s easy for animals to mistake plastics for food. And the whale likely died of starvation and dehydration brought on by the plastic stuffing in its belly. Whales absorb water from the food they eat. Unable to digest the plastic or to digest enough food to live, many animals perish. When you see the scale of The Ghost Below, it really hits home. You understand it differently, more viscerally, more emotionally than any words could convey. The same is true of National Geographic photography. The very best of their images remind us that a photograph has the power to do infinitely more than any document or speech. Pristine Seas’ photographs and films not only transfix us, they move us. Art has the power to pique our curiosity, prick our conscience, wake us up, charm, delight and inspire us, make us feel awe, help us understand, make us care, and move us to protect what we care about.
How is Oracle philanthropy tackling plastic pollution on land?
Did you know that plastic takes more than 400 years to degrade? This means that almost all of the plastic ever produced still exists in some form. The impact on the environment and human health has been devastating, especially in densely populated urban areas.
In Lagos, Nigeria, Oracle grantee, WeCyclers, has designed an innovative solution to the plastic crisis. Their rewards-for-recycling platform incentivizes people in low-income communities to capture value from recyclable waste. The model has proven to be highly effective and, last year alone, the organization reports that it helped divert 900 tons of waste from landfills. Oracle has been supporting this social enterprise annually since 2014. Today, we’re delighted to see them not only thriving, but also expanding. Wecyclers’ franchise program is empowering more individuals to create recycling enterprises. All franchisees are provided with logistical support, financial and environmental education, business planning, and management support.
Another land-based part of combating plastic pollution: Oracle Volunteers, who work year-round on projects big and small to reduce pollution, restore ecosystems, and impart sustainable living practices, fostering a lighter footprint on our planet. For example, more than 700 Oracle Volunteers recently teamed up with The Ocean Conservancy for a global cleanup project. Together, in a matter of days, they removed 6,319 pounds of trash and litter—including lots of plastic—from lakeshores, riverbanks, and beaches around the world. This project is just one of hundreds undertaken by Oracle Volunteers every year.
How is Oracle helping to re-shape the future of plastics through its technology?
We know that plastics pose a danger to all living creatures and significantly harm our planet. Part of Earth Day’s call-to-action is to invest in and support innovative technologies that solve for this crisis.
Oracle Blockchain technology—which is a collaborative data-sharing framework—is just one of the innovations being leveraged for good. Keep Sea Blue uses it in their Recovered Seaside Plastic® certification program. Using Oracle Blockchain, they track the journey of plastic waste recovered from areas around the Mediterranean Sea. Once plastic is collected, its monitored as it moves to recycling facilities, where it’s eventually remade into fresh food packaging for supermarkets—recyclable, of course. This not only helps protect the Mediterranean, it also helps companies build trust in their sustainability efforts, and earn the trust of environmentally conscious consumers.
Oracle also partners with Ocean Co., a network of organizations dedicated to ocean conservation, and Ocean Bottle, a reusable bottle brand, to fund projects around the world that collect ocean-bound plastics. Since 2019, Oracle has funded the collection of more than 150,000 kg of plastic, and this year, we’ve created co-branded water bottles that will continue to fund collection projects worldwide.
How can we do our part to help combat plastic pollution?
“We all need to make conscientious, incremental choices daily, about everything that goes into living our lives. Simultaneously, we need to accomplish big things. We need to do it now and we can, if people like you and me, all of us, rise to the occasion.”
It’s human to be overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude and variety of challenges that we face when it comes to synthetic plastic. Equally innate is the sense of remorse that arises from our role in the genesis of this substance now jeopardizing the balance of our planet and its inhabitants – ourselves included. Plastic doesn’t exist in nature, and the Victorian era chemists who created it didn’t realize what could happen, but today we know its adverse impacts on the environment.
So, what are we going to do about it? Yes, governments and entire industries need to be part of the solution, but so do all 8 billion of us, every day, in ways both large and small.
Several years ago, I heard James Clear, author of Atomic Habits, tell the story of Dave Brailsford, who was hired by the governing body of professional cycling in Great Britain to help it rise from 100 years of mediocrity to victory. The winning strategy was something coach Brailsford called “the aggregation of marginal gains.” The whole principle came from the idea that if you broke down everything you could think of that goes into riding a bike and then improved it by 1 percent, you’d get a significant improvement when you put them all together. In the beginning, there is almost no difference between making a choice that is 1 percent better or 1 percent worse. In other words, it won’t impact very much today…but, as time goes on, small improvements (or declines) compound. Then, you “suddenly” find a very big difference in outcomes. Small choices add up over the long term.
So, what if we deconstructed every aspect of our plastic reliance today, and committed to improving on that? So much is needed, but what if we started with even 1 percent, right now? What if even a fraction of 8 billion of us did that, along with corporations, industries, and nations? Imagine the collective impact and what we could accomplish in the next few years.
We all need to make conscientious, incremental choices daily, about everything that goes into living our lives. Simultaneously, we need to accomplish big things. We need to do it now and we can, if people like you and me, all of us, rise to the occasion.