Seabin

Seabin is an Australian clean-tech company that originated from a straightforward question between its founders, Andrew Turton and Pete Ceglinski: "If we have rubbish bins on land, why don't we have rubbish bins for the ocean?". The two, both avid surfers and water lovers from Byron Bay, leveraged their respective backgrounds to bring the idea to life. Turton, a boat builder, conceptualized the device, while Ceglinski, with a background in product design and boat building, provided the expertise to engineer and commercialize the product. They officially teamed up in 2013, and by 2014, Ceglinski had quit his job to focus on developing the first prototype in a workshop in Palma de Mallorca, Spain. A successful crowdfunding campaign in late 2015 raised over $260,000, enabling the start of commercial production in May 2018.

Initially, Seabin focused on selling its hardware, a floating trash skimmer designed for calm water environments like marinas and ports. The device functions like a combination of a pool skimmer and a garbage can, drawing in water from the surface to capture floating debris, microplastics, oils, and other pollutants in a catch bag, before pumping the filtered water back out. However, in 2020, the company executed a significant strategic pivot, shifting from solely selling hardware to a service-based model centered on generating revenue from nature-positive impact data. This evolution transformed Seabin into a data-focused operation that provides services to corporate and government clients.

Under its current business model, Seabin offers full-service pollution control for urban waterways, such as its "100 Smarter Cities by 2050" program. The company leases its Seabin units and provides maintenance and data collection services. The collected waste is analyzed, and the resulting data is sold to clients for their sustainability reporting and to demonstrate environmental impact. This approach has created a recurring revenue stream, with the company reporting it hit a $1 million annual recurring revenue milestone in 2023 primarily from data sales to clients including Yamaha, IBM, Patagonia, Veolia, and the City of Sydney. The data also supports broader environmental goals, such as lobbying for policy changes regarding plastic pollution and educating the public.

Keywords: ocean cleaning technology, marine debris collection, microplastic filtering, environmental data, nature-repair data, impact data, water pollution monitoring, corporate sustainability, smart cities, ocean health, cleantech, marine technology, pollution index, floating trash skimmer, citizen science, water quality, sustainability reporting, environmental services, circular economy, waste management