WILDPLASTIC is a team of currently 17 people from different backgrounds who are united by the goal of recovering as much wild plastic waste as possible from the environment and returning it to the recycling cycle. To achieve this, we work hand in hand with collection organizations in regions that are particularly affected by the plastic crisis. We buy the plastic from them, giving the material a new value and feeding it back into the production cycle by making new products from it, such as our WILDBAGS and WILDmailingbags.

The term "wild plastic" describes all the plastic that currently exists outside the closed recycling loop. It is mainly found on streets, illegal and open dumbsides, and in nature, mainly in countries without sufficient waste management and recycling systems. Please note: The wild plastic we use is not ocean plastic. Although it fits the definition, our work starts before the plastic even reaches the water.

Our products are tools to fulfill our mission. With them, we want to give wild plastic waste a value again. We do this by improving the working conditions of local collectors, bringing wild plastic back into the recycling cycle and saving CO2 in the process in comparison to virgin plastic. To achieve this, we work closely together with collection organizations and have carried out a product life cycle analysis with our partner Planet A in order to have as much certainty as possible that we are achieving our goals.

No product is environmentally friendly in the strictest sense. Not even one from WILDPLASTIC. So the question is rather how our products compare to similar products. If you compare the environmental impact of similar products, our WILD products perform better on average.

Even though we often see plastic in the environment and like to (rightly) complain about the German waste system, the waste problem here is much less acute than in most other regions of the world. That doesn't mean that we think it's great that most of the waste is incinerated. But most of it is collected and does not end up in the environment, which is not the case in most other regions of the world. There is simply too much waste for the local waste systems and too few buyers for less valuable plastics such as old plastic film.

That's why we want to create a market for this film plastic in fair partnerships and thus ensure that there is less plastic waste in the environment and that the working conditions for the people who collect the wild plastic waste are improved.

We design all WILDPLASTIC® products (e.g. our WILDBAG) so that they can be recycled. In practice, however, this does not mean that this actually happens, and as always, the whole thing is a little more complicated. There are about a million reasons why this is the case. For example, residual waste is almost always incinerated in Germany. For cost reasons, for example, it is usually not worth sorting out and cleaning the garbage bags beforehand in order to recycle them.

We and you can do little to change most of these one million reasons, except to demand politically that we fundamentally change the way we manufacture products and how we dispose of them. The most effective way to do this is through demonstrations and petitions.