Series 9 has arrived! Our first guest is Cyrill Gutsch, the fascinating founder of Parley for the Oceans. With his partner Lea Stepken, this NY-based former product designer and branding expert started his global environmental organisation in 2012, after bumping into Pamela Anderson at an art fair.
Pammy was wearing a Sea Shepherd T-shirt, and when Cyrill asked her why, she told him Sea Shepherd’s activist-in-chief Paul Watson was in trouble - he’d been arrested in Frankfurt on an international warrant. Cyrill, being German, thought he might be able to help, and went to visit Watson in a lawyer’s office. There, he learned that Watson’s strife was a drop in the proverbial compared with the oceans’ problems. Plastic pollution! Climate change! Overfishing! Could creativity be the super power needed to turn it around?
The rest, as they say, is history. Cyrill decided to ditch his regular clients, and donate his time to just one: the big blue. Specifically, raising awareness around the “beauty and fragility” of our oceans and “collaborating on projects [to] end their destruction.”
Over the years, such projects have included: working with Adidas to phase out single-use plastics; partnering with big-name visual artists on everything from underwater sculptures to sustainable surfboards; funding research into new materials; and setting up programs in schools. On a practical level, Parley’s work is just as likely to play out as beach cleanups in the Maldives as it is to be a new Dior bag. It’s all in the mix, to beat what Cyrill calls “our addiction” to virgin plastic.
Next on his To-Do List? Just a total materials revolution. “We need to change the way we make stuff.”
