“One person’s trash is another’s treasure” is pretty much the organizing principle of the recycling industry. But what about the refuse that fails to even make it into a trash bin? A shocking amount of plastic ends up in waterways and, ultimately, the ocean. Contrary to some depictions of “the Great Pacific Garbage Patch,” the problem is not so much a floating landfill of toys and bottles, rather it’s an abundance of tiny degraded bits of plastic that a variety of organisms ingest.

Plastic undergoes chemical reactions and a physical beating in the ocean that reduces it to specks. Combine that small particle size with the fact that the ocean is rather large, and it should be obvious that it would be virtually impossible to clean up the plastic at this stage of the process. To make a real difference, you have to attack the problem closer to the source—when the plastic is still largely intact and before it reaches the ocean.

At beaches or bends in waterways where plastic waste tends to accumulate, plastic items are still in good enough shape that they could actually be recycled. So not only can we intercept some plastic, but somebody can make money doing it. In fact, they are: in a couple of months, Dell is going to start using some of this recycled “ocean plastic” in packaging materials for its products.