ENCINITAS — In 2018, Matthew Clough found himself at a crossroads. A former paramedic and full-time at-home dad, he had just seen his youngest child enter middle school, giving him time to reflect on his next steps.
Around the same time, China announced it would no longer accept most of the world’s recycling, leaving countries like the United States stuck dealing with its plastic waste. This new reality sparked Clough’s idea to create Plastic Beach, an Encinitas-based nonprofit tackling a significant environmental challenge: soft plastic pollution.
Soft plastics, including grocery bags, bubble wrap, and packaging materials, are often discarded after being used once. While recyclable, they pose logistical challenges due to their lightweight and bulky nature, making collection costly and inefficient.
With support from his wife, Clough saw an opportunity to address the issue and began transitioning Plastic Beach from a part-time project into a full-time mission.
“What would happen if someone took the money side out of this plastic pollution,” Clough said. “We simply weren’t collecting it. That was it. We hadn’t set up a system in America to even collect the clean plastic.”
Plastic Beach has since grown steadily. Founded in 2019, the nonprofit has collected nearly 100,000 pounds of soft plastic from over 30 local businesses, including Hansen’s Surf Shop and Surf Ride.
The collected plastic is downcycled at the group’s Vista facility into products like composite decking and asphalt additives, helping divert plastic from landfills where it would otherwise break down into microplastics.
Josh Hansen of Hansen’s Surfboards and Surf Shop said Clough initially reached out to the surf shop and explained the environmental challenges posed by the soft plastic packaging that frequently accompanies clothing and gear shipments.
Recognizing the potential to make a difference, Hansen’s Surfboards agreed to participate, setting up collection containers near its primary trash bins to separate plastics suitable for recycling.
“It’s an important responsibility for companies and individuals,” Hansen said. “Wherever we can do our part, that’s just one less piece of plastic that might end up in a landfill or worse, in the ocean.”
The partnership results have been notable, with Plastic Beach collecting over 1,000 pounds of soft plastic waste from Hansen’s Surfboards in the past year alone. Hansen acknowledged that the broader challenge of recycling plastics is complex, particularly given that many plastics are difficult to recycle due to contamination or prior processing.
“The more people that are educated and get on board, the more it becomes a crowdsourcing effort,” Hansen said. “You may only do a little bit, but if everybody does it, it’s a lot.”
Microplastics have raised alarms among scientists as they contaminate water sources and enter the human body. Clough referenced research indicating that the average person consumes about a credit card’s worth of plastic each year.
“The chemicals that make up soft plastic, they break down inside of us once they enter our digestive tract,” Clough said. “There is a consensus that it’s not doing a good thing for us, but again, there’s not a clear understanding of what it is that it is doing to us.”
Despite the organization’s success, Clough noted ongoing challenges, particularly the lack of financial support from local municipalities. Plastic Beach recently won a California Product Stewardship Council award for innovation, but even that recognition hasn’t swayed local officials.
“We live in Encinitas, Plastic Beach is registered here and we have tried over and over again to get the city to give us some support, and we can’t get them to pay attention,” Clough said. “Even with that level of exposure, we still can’t get our local cities to pay attention to us.”
Clough believes the lack of engagement stems from the broader perception that soft plastic recycling is an insurmountable problem. However, he is determined to prove otherwise, emphasizing that Plastic Beach’s role is to act as a catalyst.
“Our mission really is not to be the solution,” Clough said. “Our mission is to show that this is a solvable problem, and at the end of the day, we want Plastic Beach to just be the catalyst to get this to be picked up by the likes of Republic Services, EDCO waste management, and have them be the solution.”
Most of the nonprofit’s strategy involves partnerships with businesses and leveraging innovative uses for the collected plastic. One example is mixing the collected plastic with asphalt, which Clough said can extend road lifespans by about 10%, offering environmental and financial benefits.
“If we can recycle 100,000 pounds in just under three years from 30 companies, imagine how much we could recycle if we were able to capture the imagination of our local cities and businesses,” Clough said.
Looking ahead, Clough hopes that Plastic Beach’s model can be scaled to address the soft plastic crisis more broadly with the proper support. He remains optimistic, even in the face of limited government backing.
“We’re not afraid to do the hard work of building up this blueprint and showing the community what a successful collection model and engagement can look like,” Clough said. “We’re not afraid to fail, but we’d much rather succeed.”
