Our Mission
Christmas Island is our beautiful island home and we want to keep it that way.
Unfortunately, it has to compete with the dual challenges of tonnes of plastic being washed up on our beaches from the whole Indian Ocean region and the lack of a local recycling collection and management plan.
By creating Eco Crab, we are tackling both issues with the aim of growing to become able to collect, process and reuse all of the plastic that arrives on Christmas Island and produce interesting and unique products and support our community to forge a sustainable future.
Beach Cleanups
Together with volunteers from the Christmas Island community, we regularly go to Greta Beach to perform a cleanup of the plastic that has been washed ashore from the Indian Ocean currents.
Greta Beach is a sea turtle hatching ground, so keeping this area clear of obstructions is very important for the life cycle of this threatened species.
By removing the plastic debris, we make our beaches more beautiful and ensure it is usable by all creatures great and small.
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Plastic Waste Collection
We provide collection bins at our property for the residents of Christmas Island in order to allow them to properly dispose of recyclable plastic.
There is no other recycling service on the island so these bins are the only option for residents who wish to recycle their plastic waste.
We ask users to separate their plastic waste into the correct bins according to their plastic type as shown on the bin.
Plastic Waste Processing
Using the plastic that has been gathered from the Beach Cleanups and our Collection Bins, we then sort all of the plastic into the appropriate category of plastic.
We then further sort the plastic by colour before feeding it through our plastic shredder to create boxes of coloured plastic ready for use.
With this shredded plastic, we then put it through our melting and moulding process, selecting the colours as we go to create beautiful patterns in the final product.
Save the Turtles (Literally)
While performing a beach clean on Greta beach, we spotted a lone baby turtle emerging from the plastic debris on its way to the ocean.
We immediately leapt into action, excavating the hatching site from beneath the rubble and clearing a path through the trash to allow the baby turtles a chance to get onto the sand and into the waves.
This episode highlights how important it is to keep the beaches free from plastic waste to allow nature to take its course.
Read about this and more in our blog!
Plastic is a Global Issue
The global failure in proper management of our plastic waste is on stark display on our very own Greta Beach in Christmas Island.
Discarded plastic from across the Indian Ocean ends up here, forcing the red crabs to stumble across expanses of rubbish to reach the ocean.
Prospective sea turtle mothers exhaust themselves attempting to dig through the plastic detritus to lay their eggs in the vain hope that the babies will be able to parkour through the obstacle course once they hatch.
Learning more about this issue is essential if we hope to take steps to address this global problem.
