MIAMI — A South Florida resident inspired a global movement to clean up plastic from the world’s beaches in 2021, but he wasn’t satisfied.
It was five years ago when Surfside ad executive and surfer Rodrigo Butori went viral, posting images of plastic trash in the form of fish.
The Plastic Fisherman became an international movement, but cleaning up beaches wasn’t enough.
“I always hear about this island of plastic in the ocean, right, and so I kept that in the back of my head when I started Plastic Fisherman,” said Butori. “And then I realized at one event when I went to the recycling facility that I was just moving plastic from that plastic in the ocean to a mountain of plastic inland.”
Much of the plastic collected wasn’t recyclable and ended up in our landfills.
“So at that point, I was like, I have to figure out a way to solve for this too,” he said. “And I would love to do this in a way that again involves like creativity, involves art.”
So the Plastic Fisherman has become a plastic sculptor.
What started in the native Brazilian’s garage has grown into a full shop in Miami that keeps plastic from the beach cleanups out of landfills and turns it into something useful.
Butori still fishes for plastic on our shores but he also has a supplier.
He’s teaming up with Clean Miami Beach, which delivers the plastic trash they collect to his shop.
“This our home, our backyard, and it’s our duty to leave the place better than we found it,” said Sophie Rangel with Clean Miami Beach. “So we pick up the plastic, hand it over to him, and then he makes furniture out of it, which is so cool.”
Said Butori: “We sort the plastic by color. Then we grind each one of those types of colors, if you want to call it, into flakes. And those flakes are then placed into this machine, in that 250 degrees that melts and they become like gum basically.”
The melted plastic is molded into the beams that form uniquely colorful benches and chairs.
The benches weigh more than 80 pounds. That’s 80 pounds of plastic waste given new life into something useful and artistic.
“So as I say, we’re not making a bench, we’re making a story,” said Butori. “Live every bench is a big story (that) starts with people collecting plastic at the beach.”
But the Plastic Fisherman isn’t just teaming up with Clean Miami Beach and other cleanup organizations. He also has corporate support, and he recently delivered his first custom bench to Warner Brothers in Miami.
The sales of the benches help cover the cost of the machines used to create them.
“If you don’t have financial support, if you don’t have somebody who believes in what we’re doing and helps us keep afloat, then there’s no point,” Butori said.
As the Plastic Fisherman movement sprouted chapters in 11 different countries, Butori hopes the plastic furniture does the same.
“We finally managed to close the loop which was the very first goal we had,” he said. “We’re looking for ways to scale the impact, and I believe that this is a model that can be used like in small towns everywhere. It’s a simple, basic investment, but the outcome is fantastic. All that plastic waste is no longer waste right now. It has a new life. It has purpose.”
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