Electrolux has pioneered green manufacturing for years, and began producing commercial vacuums containing recycled plastic in 2008. The behemoth appliance maker recently took its commitment to eco-friendliness to the next level with its “Vac from the Sea” initiative in June-a plan to build six display vacuum cleaners with plastic gathered mainly from polluted water.

Electrolux is scavenging plastic from floating garbage masses in the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian oceans and three European seas. Slated to launch in September 2010, these models won’t be for sale, but are instead meant to spark awareness about the scarcity of recycled plastics available for making sustainable home appliances. The cleaners’ recycled plastic content will be to the tune of 70%-a new standard for the appliance manufacturer.

“Just putting recycled plastic cleaners on the shelf won’t create awareness among consumers or motivate companies to be [greener],” says Cecilia Nord, vice president of floor care, environmental and sustainability affairs at Electrolux. “We want to point out we have actually done this. We’re saying to suppliers: ‘If you venture into this territory, you can do this, too.’ It’s a challenge to ourselves and to our industry.”

Supply and Demand

Even as plastic islands the size of large states float in our oceans, obtaining recyclable plastic refined enough to use in these types of applications, is difficult to say the least. “It’s a question of adequate material that fulfills technical and aesthetic demands,” Nord explains. “Many manufacturers are not recycling it at a sophisticated level yet and the number of suppliers who do are quite limited more or less to Europe.”

While it’s not necessarily more expensive to recycle plastic to this level, recycled raw material is harder to come by. Too many manufacturers are using plastic in an “unsophisticated” way, Nord says, which results in excess waste.

The company has said that much research is being done by the recycling industry, but that consumers’ perceptions still needs to change, and recycling barriers must come down in order for the cycle to continue working.

Electrolux hopes the “Vac from the Sea” initiative will do just that. The company is sending divers out to obtain the plastic, or will have volunteers scoop it up from waves, depending on the location.

Once the plastic is procured, Electrolux turns it over to Richmond, Calif.-based MBA Polymers, a company that has developed a procedure to cost-effectively recover separate types and grades of plastics from mixed, plastics-rich waste. The mixed plastic is separated from non-plastic materials and then sorted with a fully automated process that converts the material to high-value, new materials.

From Diving to Design

“No other coastline in Sweden is so severely impacted by sea debris than that of Bohuslän,” the company noted in the project’s blog, which tracks the divers’ and designers’ progress. “About 20,000 [tons] of garbage [are] dumped in the North Sea every year. The Bohuslän archipelago, with its thousands of islands and reefs, acts as a filter for the water masses on their way North. Most of the debris sinks to the sea floor, and around 5,000 cubic meters of debris floats ashore on the beaches of Bohuslän.”

The appliance company is currently devising the first vacuum prototype from this waste. It will test how the sea plastic behaves when it is molded into a finished vacuum cleaner.

“The challenges are many,” an Electrolux staff member wrote in a recent blog entry. “Which parts can be made with plastic from the sea? How do you solve the problem with casting together different types of plastic? And what will the final vacs look like with plastic from different oceans? It is an exciting work.”

Gaining Notoriety

Although a complete “sea vac” has not yet been made, Nord is already anticipating the effect that the model could have on the manufacturing community. “We do hope people-both in our industry and others-will see this opportunity and that it will raise awareness,” she notes.

So far, Nord’s hopes have been rewarded. The vacuum cleaners will launch in Europe this September before being introduced to the rest of the world, but they have already captured the attention of businesses and media globally.

“We’re really thrilled about the attention from media in general and green organizations around the world,” Nord says. “[The Vac from the Sea] has been well-received by many important organizations.”

Although ocean pollution has become a hot topic since the infamous BP oil spill, Electrolux has had this project in mind long before that incident, Nord says. The company considers itself a pioneer in recycled plastic integration; it launched its first vacuum made from post recycled material in 2008. It currently sells eight models made from more than 50% post-consumer recycled plastic, a number it hopes to someday double.