Mike Smith travels the world tackling the global plastic problem, camping in some of the far-flung corners of the planet to clean up mountains of trash in what has been a marketing strategy unlike any other.
In a few short years, environmental warrior Mike Smith has forced consumers and government to sit up and take notice around the world with its audacious clean-up programs to address the global plastic pollution issue head on.
He’s the face of eco startup Zero Co, which has set out to eliminate single use plastics from every Australian kitchen, laundry and bathroom by producing a range of products packaged in recycled plastic designed to be reused. The personal care and home cleaning products are delivered direct to your door, minus the single-use plastic, while refills can be ordered direct.
But it’s the ambitious goal to tackle the world’s plastic pollution problem that has ultimately helped grow the brand from zero to hero; despite only launching right before the pandemic hit our shores.
Smith and his team have been winning friends and influencing people by embarking on massive clean-up efforts in far-flung locations around the world. By the end of 2022, Zero Co has removed 1.5 million water bottles worth of rubbish from the ocean.
But it’s just a drop in the ocean. It’s estimated that there could be more plastic in the ocean (by weight) than fish by 2050, which spurs Mike on in his pursuit of cleaning up plastic from the world’s waterways.
“Our vision is to be the world’s leading zero-waste personal care and home cleaning brand. We’ve been doing more clean-ups to raise people’s awareness and garnering plenty of attention along the way,” Mike explains.
The Zero Co team have pulled 6,000 kgs of plastic from the Java Sea off the coast of Jakarta and taken a plastic-busting road trip from Cairns to Canberra with more than 3,000 plastic bottles in tow to show the crazy amount of plastic Aussies could stop in their tracks by joining Zero Co.
He’s also taken a team to Egypt to pull a million water bottles worth of rubbish out of the Nile River. The bottles were used to build the world’s largest waste pyramid, which Mike slept on top of for three days.
Zero Co has broken records in the process. The world’s longest underwater clean-up where a scuba diver worked at the bottom of the Sydney Harbour for 24 hours straight, which was live broadcast online.
“Almost every week, we’re doing something out there to try and solve the problem. I went to Israel and Palestine for a conference a couple of months, and I was blown away by the amount of plastic that I saw, and knew that I needed to do something about the problem.”
Mike says the hope is that he can inspire businesses to come on board, while the public is also being asked to sponsor a bundle of rubbish. “What we’re doing is more important than commerce. This is about genuinely trying to do the right thing and solve a massive problem. We’re not trying to sell shoes to people here.
“The message of ocean clean ups and Zero Co are intrinsically linked. That will always be a core part of our message and the main reason why more than 70,000 households purchase our products,” he says.
“We feel like the world needs a big, bold, audacious long-term vision over a long period of time, so we recently launched the 100 year clean-up. We’re spreading the word that it’s up to all of us to untrash the planet across multiple generations, which is why we’re committing to clean the planet for the next 100 years.”
ZERO CO FOUNDER MIKE SMITH
So it’s hardly surprising that when listing on equity crowdfunding platform Birchal, Zero Co broke the record for the largest crowdfund in Australian history in 2021, raising $5 million in record time – six hours.
The unprecedented high volume of traffic saw 3,082 investors pour cash into the business, making all the hard work worthwhile for Mike and his Zero Co team. Zero Co is also now rolling out its product lines into about 150 supermarket chains and adding new products to the range, including toilet paper.
The result was incredible, but the fact is that Zero Co was already a recognisable brand that was celebrated for being an eco champion both in Australia and other parts of the world.
“Since the equity raise, we’ve doubled our monthly recurring revenue. So the reorder rate from returning customers has doubled in the four months since we’ve done our capital raise, which is awesome.”
The ideas for these monumental clean-up missions strike when he’s sitting at home daydreaming, or on his way to work.
“I don’t think that the governments around the world are going to solve this problem. But someone has to. I figured it might as well be us.
“We’ve built the business to solve the global problem and what we realised is that we had a really amazing response from consumers, who wanted to support us because they could see we are real people doing something real in the real world to solve a problem,” he says.
He’s currently planning a clean up of the Bagmati River in Nepal. “We’ll build some kind of giant structure from the plastics we pulled out of the river. We haven’t quite decided what it will be yet. But it will be in an epic location in front of the Himalayas overlooking Mt Everest,” Mike says.
A clean-up effort in the Himalayas and around Kathmandu and potentially Everest base camp is also being considered. Mike also wants to dive the world’s seven oceans simultaneously and switch on a live broadcast for the world to watch on.
“We feel like the world needs a big, bold, audacious long-term vision over a long period of time, so we recently launched 100 year clean-up. We’re spreading the word that it’s up to all of us to untrash the planet across multiple generations, which is why we’re committing to clean the planet for the next 100 years.”
He also aims to raise $1 million a year from customers, sponsors and industry peers every year to help fund the plastic clean-up efforts. “It’s going to require an intergenerational effort to fix these problems. We all need to do our bit over multiple generations to rid all of the plastic that has made its way into the natural environment.”
