Hand opening car, taking out box and  carrying to pontoon

Music

00:00

MILLAR:  A precious delivery arrives at a dock in the Mediterranean.

00:06

Peter opening box as Frenchmen look on. Removing Seabin from packaging

Music

00:10

MILLAR:  Years of ambition and determination wrapped up in cardboard and tape. 

00:15

Music

00:20

PETER CEGLINSKI:  “This is something that we’ve put a lot of blood, sweat and tears into”.

00:26

Pete explaining the setup of the machine over shot of marina,

“You connect this one to here, the pump is over there also.”

00:30

Sascha takes photos

SASCHA CHAPMAN:  “It’s really exciting but at the same time, we’re all sort of on edge”.

00:35

Peter unwrapping machine

PETER CEGLINSKI: We only have one bag on this trip because of my sewing machine – broken”.

00:39

Peter carries machine to water

LISA MILLAR:  What started as a dream to clean the ocean, is about to face its toughest test. 

00:45

Peter putting the machine together

PETER CEGLINSKI: “So Sergio, connect it up”.

“Everybody is aware of the ocean problem with the plastics, thanks to social media. We came in at a time where the world was screaming for a solution”.

00:54

SERGIO RUIZ HALPERN:  “Right turn it on?”

PETER CEGLINSKI: “No don’t turn it on, but we need to fill with water, so where is the hose?”

“We’re a little bit worried that if we show a final product that is not really perfect and it fails somehow, then there’s going to be a bit of a backlash and negativity about it”.

01:11

Millar watches

LISA MILLAR:  So will it work? 

PETER CEGLINSKI: “Let’s do it.”

01:30

Music

01:33

Sweeping shot of ocean. Woman swimming/Plastics in water GFX:  SAVING THE BIG BLUE  Reporter:  LISA MILLAR

01:44

Marina. GFX:  
PALMA DE MAJORCA, SPAIN

02:00

LISA MILLAR:  It’s an island known for its crystal clear waters, sandy beaches, a playground for tourists. 

02:06

Peter walking into room with wetsuits and packing van

PETER CEGLINSKI:  “Yeah I’ve got the wetties”.

LISA MILLAR:  It’s also where a couple of Australians have decided to base their start up.

02:18

SASCHA CHAPMAN:  “You’re taking that as well?  How many boards are going up?”

LISA MILLAR:  Pete Ceglinski comes from a background of product design and manufacturing, and used to have what most of us would call a dream gig.

02:26

PETER CEGLINSKI:  [Co-founder, Seabin Project]  “I was working as a boat builder in a company that we were specialising in racing yachts. This got me invited to some pretty big gigs overseas,

02:41

Peter driving to beach

like the Americas Cup and the Volvo Ocean Race.  We were working our butts off”.

“Come on sun, come on waves, come on everything!”.

02:51

Sascha and Peter in van

“And then we’d have two weeks off and I’d run off to Mexico or Brazil somewhere and go surfing

03:00

Peter 100%. Super:
PETER CEGLINSKI
Co-founder, Seabin Project

and then the next stop was in India or China or anywhere. 

03:07

Peter arrives at beach

We never had to pay for anything, we got flights everywhere around the world.  They paid for accommodation, food salary – it was great”.

03:11

LISA MILLAR:  It was while he was on tour that Pete realised he couldn’t ignore a widespread problem, the world over”.

03:20

Rubbish on beach/Peter and friends walk with boards

PETER CEGLINSKI:  “The world’s oceans are so disgusting and polluted it’s not funny.  And to be honest, we’re not even seeing the most of it because 70% is an estimate, the marine pollution is on the bottom of the seafloor and only 30% is what we

03:30

Peter 100%.

visually see, so it’s pretty bad”.

03:44

Peter and friends surfing

Music

03:48

LISA MILLAR:  So he made a life changing decision, throw in the high paying job in exchange for trying to do something useful”.

03:52

Music

03:59

PETER CEGLINSKI:  “I gave up this really good gig of travelling around the world and being financially secure and I gave up that because

04:05

Peter 100%

I’d never done anything for anybody else or for the environment before and I’ve always wanted to

04:14

Peter leaving beach

be in a position where I can work on a project or an idea or a business or even for myself where I can make a positive impact on somebody else or the environment”.

04:21

Seabin in operation

LISA MILLAR:  They named it the Seabin.  Based on the idea of water draining from a bath, it’s designed to suck in rubbish floating in ports and marinas. 

“Talk to me about the technology of it because someone said to me, oh isn’t it just a big pool

04:33

Peter 100%

skimmer basically?  And what kind of pump do you need for that?  Doesn’t it need to be huge?”

04:48

PETER CEGLINSKI:  “The technology in the Seabin is the most simple thing ever.  It’s the same as a pool skimmer.

04:54

Peter drawing on white board explaining Seabin to Millar

This is the filter and this is the Seabin and this is a water pump.  And when the floating rubbish comes in, this bottle, it stops in here, and then the water still passes through”. 

LISA MILLAR:  And just like a land based bin, when the Seabin fills it has to be emptied, the liner replaced. 

05:01

PETER CEGLINSKI:  “The greatest challenge is to have that in a, in a natural

05:22

Peter 100%

environment with the tidal range and with waves and boats and to have that functioning”.

05:28

Peter drawing on white board explaining Seabin

“We have an internal component which adjusts to the waves and if a boat goes past and it washes in, the internal component moves up and down as well.  I’m not going to explain the million-dollar way, like the idea how it works, though, on camera”. 

LISA MILLAR:  Even with their patents in place,

05:34

Seabin project poster

the Seabin team knows hardware alone doesn’t equal success. 

SERGIO RUIZ HALPERN:  “We identified

05:55

Sergio 100%

very early on that the Seabin itself wasn’t a total or a final solution to the problem of marine plastics

06:01

Sweeping shot over ocean

in the environment”.

LISA MILLAR:  “How does a marine scientist with a PhD end up

06:12

Sergio 100%

on a lean start up like this?  Some people might say you’re a little bit crazy”. 

06:17

SERGIO RUIZ HALPERN: [Scientific Research, Seabin Project]   “A lot of people would say I’m a little crazy.

06:22

Super:
SERGIO RUIZ HALPERN
Scientific Research, Seabin project

I could be earning more, but I don’t think that’s the only measurement in life”. 

06:25

Aerial. Beach/Ocean

Music

06:33

LISA MILLAR:  “How sick are the oceans at the moment?”

SERGIO RUIZ HALPERN: “I get asked that a lot and I don’t often know how to answer.  The situation… it is grim.  There’s a lot of problems.  There’s a lot of pressure

06:38

Sergio 100%

on the oceans, but in saying that I think that more than asking ourselves what a bad state the oceans are, what we need to ask ourselves is what we can do to change the situation around, to ameliorate and to take action on simple activities by ourselves that will result in a betterment of the marine environment and I think that’s the change in perception that we need to have”.

06:54

Sascha working on laptop at marina

07:18

SASCHA CHAPMAN:  [Operations Manager, Seabin Project] “I’d met Pete roughly three years ago when I was travelling and we ended up doing a road trip together and sharing dreams and goals I guess.  I was

07:22

Sascha 100%. Super:
SASCHA CHAPMAN
Operations Manager, Seabin Project

quite stubborn and decided that I was going to continue my travels, so we went our separate ways”.

07:32

Sascha working on laptop at marina

LISA MILLAR:  As a fly in fly out worker in the Pilbara, Sascha Chapman kept an eye on Pete and his progress.

SASCHA CHAPMAN:  “We continued to be in contact the whole time and I was really proud of what he was doing. 

07:38

I guess my passion began to grow for wanting to make a difference for future generations and for the environment.  When Pete said

07:53

Sascha 100%

there was a position available for me to come over, then I, yeah, flew straight over here”.

LISA MILLAR:  “Any regrets about doing that?”

SASHA CHAPMAN:  “No, none.  No regrets whatsoever”. 

08:03

Sweeping shots along beach

Music

08:15

LISA MILLAR:  The lean start-up has had anything but a smooth ride.  A little over a year ago after spending every cent he had, Pete kicked off a crowd funding campaign in a desperate attempt to raise some cash. 

08:18

Crowd funding video. Super:
Crowd funding video

PETER CEGLINSKI:  “I was a product designer in another life and it was my job to make plastic products.  And after a while I realised that we didn’t need the stuff that I was making and so I stopped.  It’s been a big change in our life.  We’ve quit our jobs, we’ve taken all our money and we’ve put our heart and souls into making this happen.  Imagine that, we have a pollution free ocean for our future generations”.

08:29

Seabin creation

Music

08:58

LISA MILLAR:  It was a slow start and Pete had almost given up.

09:00

PETER CEGLINSKI:  “We had, we had like a $155,000 dollars with

09:05

Peter 100%

one or two days to go and if we didn’t make it you get zero.  So in probably in the last week of our crowd funding campaign, my personal savings which I’d saved about $60,000 dollars, I was going to use that to buy my parents some land and … sorry…”.  [upset]

LISA MILLAR:  “Are you okay?”

PETER CEGLINSKI: “Yeah, I get really emotional though about that. 

09:10

[continues]

Yeah.  No that was just the hardest thing that I’d ever done was the crowd funding.  Like, I was like nearly emotionally broken two times and I’d never experienced that before in my life.

09:40

Peter on skateboard to Seabin HQ

We made $267,000 American dollars and it was absolutely phenomenal”. 

09:58

LISA MILLAR:  With the gamble paying off, Pete’s been able to fit out the factory, pay the staff, albeit on minimum wage and get down to the business of preparing the Seabin for market.

10:11

Seabin manufacture montage

Music

10:28

LISA MILLAR: From a heap of hard work and heartache, the V5 Hybrid Seabin finally emerged. 

PETER CEGLINSKI:  “And so now it’s one year later and we are

10:46

Peter 100%

like 99% done”. 

10:57

Peter in office with Sascha and Sergio

 “Is it possible to have a quick sit down to discuss our trip to La Grande Motte on Friday?”

SASHA CHAPMAN:  “Yeah, sure”.

PETER CEGLINSKI:”  “Cheers guys”.

LISA MILLAR:  Before commercial production begins, Pete and the team have to present a fully functioning Seabin to financial backers in La Grande Motte, a marina in France - in less than a week. 

PETER CEGLINSKI:  “There’s a lot of pressure

10:59

Peter 100%

to give back to our

11:21

Peter in meeting with Sascha and Sergio

crowd funders, the people that supported us.  We have our shareholders and we have the pilot partners and just in general the pressure for us to have a product and not just a prototype or an idea anymore”.

11:24

Beach shots

LISA MILLAR:  But before Pete gets down to finishing the Seabin, Sergio and Sascha have organised a community event to help their research and raise awareness. 

11:38

Crowd at café

Music

11:49

Sergio addresses crowd re beach clean up

SERGIO RUIZ HALPERN:  [to crowd]  “Okay everyone, can you all move in?”

“We realised that the Seabin was a very powerful tool to broadcast this problem to a very large audience, not only through social media, but also by actively engaging and helping the new generations get a better appreciation of these problems”.

11:59

PETER CEGLINSKI:  “So today Sascha and Sergio they’ve organised a beach clean-up with all our friends and we are pretty stoked because there’s 45 people with children ranging from 3 years old to adults”.

12:20

SERGIO RUIZ HALPERN:   [to crowd] “It’s in English but it’s easy to understand.  So we are going to clean from the marina up to the river. We don’t have many, we have seven sheets so you will do it in small groups”. 

12:36

PETER CEGLINSKI:  “Sergio has set up a, like a data sheet where we can what we’re catching”. 

12:48

SERGIO RUIZ HALPERN:  [to crowd]  “We’ll hand you these bags, and when they’re full you’ll write down the information about the rubbish collected”.

12:54

Sergio and crowd head to beach and begin clean up

Music

13:01

SERGIO RUIZ HALPERN:  “Not all together!  Distribute yourselves from the marina to the river”.

LISA MILLAR:  Their army of supporters fan out across the Palma beach in search of plastic.

VOLUNTEER:  “So yes we want to support them because

13:11

Clean up volunteer

Seabin project have great ideas, so we’re super happy to help here”.

13:31

Clean up continues

PETER CEGLINSKI:  “When you come down here and look at the beach, it looks pretty clean but then you get up quite closer and oh my God, there’s just plastic everywhere”.

LISA MILLAR:  “What are you finding mostly?”

13:35

Sascha collecting rubbish

SASCHA CHAPMAN:  “A lot of cigarette butts and then a lot of the time there’ll be these sticks. This is something that we are constantly finding. It’s from the end of the ear buds and people flush them down the toilet”.

13:47

Sergio shows baby wipe

PETER CEGLINSKI:  “This is something we’d never seen before and we’d been here for a few years and been around the world and seen all the problems.  It was these baby wipes that had wrapped

13:59

Peter on beach

themselves around this seagrass.

14:09

Sergio shows baby wipe

It’s been marketed as, like being like toilet paper and you know it’s going to break down but it doesn’t”.

14:11

Clean up continues

LISA MILLAR:  “What do you get out of it?  Why do you do this?

PETER CEGLINSKI: “There’s a lot of things we get out of it apart from karma and feeling good that we’ve helped made a difference.  By understanding this littering and floating waste situation, then we can adapt this to the Seabin

14:19

Peter on beach

technology later in the, later in the future, be it with different filters or designing something to catch macro plastics or even smaller with the micro plastics.  This is all information that we’re collecting that we can use”.

14:35

Volunteers show rubbish to Sergio

Music

14:48

LISA MILLAR:  Back at the base, Sergio the scientist wants to see what they’ve got. 

14:56

Serio weighs bags filled with rubbish

SERGIO RUIZ HALPERN: “5.41 kilograms.  All the volunteers are finalising, filling out their data sheets and I’ve got a scale here in which I’m weighing their bags, so I’m writing down the amount of bags, bag they collected and how much they weigh and I will collect all the data sheets and we’ll tally them up afterwards and I’ll make a little report with all the stuff that we’ve collected.  All the degraded bits of plastic like this in time will keep degrading into smaller and smaller pieces ‘til it becomes micro plastics. Smaller animals eat it, the fish eat it and then we catch fish and it ends up on our plates, so whatever goes around comes around”. 

15:00

Crowd at café after clean up

LISA MILLAR:  With almost 53 kilos of rubbish off the beach, it’s time to relax.

15:47

Music

15:54

PETER CEGLINSKI:  “This was like the most perfect project ever because I could go surfing, I could do travelling, I could do design work.  I can use my hands to build this stuff and I could develop the technology. I could build partnerships. I could do collaborations

16:00

Peter 100%. Super:
PETER CEGLINSKI
Co-founder, Seabin Project

with people and we can help attack this global littering problem that ends up in the ocean and so, why not”.

16:17

Seabin HQ

Music

16:30

LISA MILLAR:  Goodwill and community support is great for confidence but the deadline’s looming.  They’re due in France in a matter of days and the Seabin is far from finished. 

PETER CEGLINSKI:  “At the moment I need to make a fixing for where we put the Seabin on the dock, on the floating pontoon.

16:38

Peter working on computer modelling

I’m just doing some engineering on the computer, 3D modelling then I’ll create a drawing and then I’ll go downstairs and I’ve got a bit of steel and I’ll start cutting

16:59

Peter interview at computer

that up and welding it.  And then I’ll have myself a bracket that we can use to install the Seabin on”.

17:08

Peter measuring bracket

LISA MILLAR:  “But you’ve only got a few days”.

PETER CEGLINSKI:  “If I can’t get this bracket to work and if I can’t build it within the next two days, then we simply cannot install a Seabin and all our investing - the time and money

17:16

Peter interview at computer

and the pressure from a lot of other people it would be… yeah it would be pretty bad if we don’t get this done. So everything is actually depending on this one piece”.

LISA MILLAR:  “And it’s very dependent on you.  You are actually carrying a great deal of the load, aren’t you?”

PETER CEGLINSKI:  “Yeah, definitely the pressure of getting this one piece and then every other piece of the puzzle together is landing pretty heavily on my shoulders, but it’s all right.  I enjoy a challenge”.

17:34

Peter welding bracket

Music

18:06

PETER CEGLINSKI:  “I’m doing this because we simply don’t have the funds to get people to build stuff for us.  This is why we stocked up on tools and skills when we started this whole thing”.

18:17

Music

18:29

Peter with finished bracket

PETER CEGLINSKI:  “The moment of truth. Let’s see if it fits.  Well, first moment of truth, yeah all good.  Just need some big bolts and it’ll be fine”.

LISA MILLAR:  “How nervous do you get with every moment of truth?”

PETER CEGLINSKI:  “Little bit, definitely get a little bit nervous if we’re going to go all the way to La Grande Motte and then have something that doesn’t fit or we forgot to bring the bolts or the nuts – little bit of pressure”.

18:36

Music

19:15

Palma marina. Peter tests bracket

LISA MILLAR:  They’ve got the bracket working in the factory so they put it to the test in a local Palma marina.  But it’s not quite right.

19:24

Sascha at marina watching Peter

SASCHA CHAPMAN: “Shit, it sounds like it’s running out of battery”. 

LISA MILLAR:  It doesn’t sound too healthy”.

SASCHA CHAPMAN:  “No, it didn’t. 

19:40

I’m nervous for him as well, you know, he’s put a lot of time and energy, effort, money into this project as well, and also all the crowdfunding that’s gone into I guess this moment where it’s just, yeah hoping it all happens”. 

19:50

Peter at marina fitting bracket

LISA MILLAR:  “Were you expecting to do this last minute modification?”

PETER CEGLINSKI:  “No.  No, but there’s always surprises. It’s what keeps you on your feet isn’t it?”

LISA MILLAR:  “Are you happy with it now do you think?”

PETER CEGLINSKI:  “We’ll see in a second.

20:09

Music

20:25

PETER CEGLINSKI: And It works.  Happy days”.

20:40

Marina

Music

20:44

20:50

Seabin HQ. Peter, Sascha, Sergio have meal

LISA MILLAR:  Another milestone in the bag, it’s back to the factory for yet more modifications before they head to France.

20:57

SERGIO RUIZ HALPERN:  “Do you have to sew a new catch bag Pete?”

PETER CEGLINSKI:  “Yeah, two.   So we can do a change”.

LISA MILLAR:  Pete plays it cool but the stress is building, the 20 hour days are taking their toll.

21:04

PETER CEGLINSKI: “Need to paint the Seabin, we need to make a little tent or something so we can put it in there and we can put heat on it, because it’s so cold last time the paint didn’t dry for like three days”. 

21:16

Team eating in darkness

Music

21:32

LISA MILLAR:  The last thing they need is a power outage. 

21:35

Peter goes to meter box

PETE CEGLINSKI:  [lights go out] “Fuck”. 

21:40

Sergio on phone in darkness

SERGIO RUIZ HALPERN: “Maybe there’s been a cut that’s affected the whole street - but we’ve looked around, and other businesses have power”.

21:50

PETER CEGLINSKI: “What do we have an outstanding that needs electricity?”

21:59

Peter working in darkness

LISA MILLAR:  There’s no time to wait for electricians, they’ve got less than 24 hours to get the Seabin ready for travel – power or not. 

22:03

Music

22:15

LISA MILLAR:  “You’ve taken a high stand about dealing with companies that you feel

22:21

Peter 100%

don’t share your ethical view. Is that a bit naïve?”

22:23

PETER CEGLINSKI:  “We don’t really see the worth in partnering with this maybe a big industrial giant that is raping and pillaging the earth, and then turn around and go here’s a million bucks and, you know, create a Seabin and we’re going to help you and try and make ourselves look better, and in the end we look like idiots because yeah, it’s not good.  So we’ve been politely declining their offers and just sort of sticking it out, and hoping that the right people would come along and there’s a couple of people that we think are suitable and at the end of the day we had our crowd funding money and we did that because we really wanted to give it a go ourselves”. 

Seabin HQ. Night

Music

23:15

Peter and Sascha at airport with Seabin

23:21

LISA MILLAR:  They’ve worked through the night and despite the curveballs they’ve faced this week, the Seabin team and their precious cargo make the early morning flight.

23:28

Flying to La Grande Motte

Music

23:42

La Grande Motte GVs

LISA MILLAR: They reach the rather whacky ‘60s seaside resort of La Grande Motte. It’s just over a year since the fundraising success. 

 23:47

La Grande Motte marina

Music

24:01

Sascha and Peter get Seabin from car and take to marina

LISA MILLAR: Everything is hanging on this moment. They’ve got to shine.

24:08

Peter unpacks Seabin and takes to pontoon

[to Peter]  “It’s been a pretty dramatic week”.

PETER CEGLINSKI:  “Yeah definitely.  We’ve had a lot of hurdles this week and for the last one year, but everything sort of came to a head this week and I think we’ve ironed out all the bugs”. 

24:15

LISA MILLAR:  Failure here would be devastating for them. 

“You’ve been waiting a long time?”

ERIC PALLIER:  [Manager, La Grande Motte Marina]  “Now it’s one year and one month

24:33

Eric interview

since we signed a development partnership and to be the first port to try to put the Seabin in and clean the port”. 

24:44

Peter on pontoon, installs Seabin

PETER CEGLINSKI:  [on the wharf]  “Let’s do it”.

24:58

Music

25:00

LISA MILLAR:  With everything finally in place, we collectively hold our breath.

25:09

Seabin in action

Music

[applause]

25:18

LISA MILLAR:  It’s working.  Each dip draws in water and rubbish with an almost mesmerizing gurgle. 

25:29

PETER CEGLINSKI:  “See all this?  Starting to come, you can see like the oil is pulling in, creating a small current”.

LISA MILLAR:  I’m equally amazed and relieved.  In the coming months, commercial production and sales of the Seabin will begin. 

25:43

Sascha and Peter walk in forest

Music

26:16

LISA MILLAR:  “And what will success look like for you?”

PETER CEGLINSKI:  “Success?  I have a vision in my head of me rocking up to some tropical country with a plastic pollution problem,

26:27

Peter 100%

and under one arm I’ve got my surfboard and under the other arm I’ve got my Seabin and we’re off to visit the mayor or the city officials or something

26:42

Peter and Sascha sit on platform overlooking sea

and get the job done and go for a surf and then come back and do another job.  So that’s success for me”.

26:49

LISA MILLAR:  “Because Seabin’s not going to save the world, is it?”

26:59

Peter  100%

PETER CEGLINSKI:  “No, Seabin’s definitely not going to save the world, but it’s a start.  It’s a step in the right direction of saving the world”. 

27:01

Peter and Sascha sit on platform overlooking sea

27:09

Credits

Reporter: Lisa Millar

Producer: Poppy Stockell

Researcher: Winsome Denyer

Camera: Niall Lenihan

Editor: Joshua Webber

Executive producer: Marianne Leitch

abc.net.au/foreign

© 2017

27:15

Outpoint

28:01