Text by Eliza Murphy Chang
Images courtesy of Mananalu
It was in April 2019, that actor Jason Momoa — you might also know him as Aquaman — launched his YouTube video in which he shaves off his beard to draw attention to our plastic pollution problem. “Now that I’ve become Aquaman,” he says, “there are a lot of things I want to do to try to save the Earth.” Recently, our properties partnered with his aluminum bottled water brand Mananalu. We’re a bit biased, sure, but creating your own drinking water company is objectively a pretty awesome way to do it.
As a native Hawaiian, Jason has a long history of environmentalism that began even before he founded Mananalu. He fought to stop the construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope on Mauna Kea and represented the island nations when testifying on climate change in front of the United Nations. And in April 2019, he announced the launch of his new drinking water company, Mananalu.
In Hawaiian, “mana” means the sacred spirit of life and “nalu” means a powerful wave that pushes across the ocean. With Mananalu, Jason sought to create a wave of change by fighting plastic pollution with aluminum-canned water.
He debuted Mananalu via video, while shaving his infamous beard for the first time in seven years and sharing all the reasons that inspired him to launch the drinking water company. Like the fact that ocean plastic pollution is destroying our planet, and that aluminum—an infinitely recyclable material—could just be our saving grace. “It’s just water,” Jason says in the video, “but I feel good about it.”
Mananalu is more than just an aluminum bottle that replaces plastic water bottles. With their partner rePurpose Global – the first plastic offset platform in the world -they remove the equivalent of one plastic bottle from ocean-going waste.
RePurpose Global is taking a stand against plastic pollution by removing over 2.5 million pounds of it every year in eight different countries. These clean-ups provide a tangible way for companies looking to become Plastic Neutral or Negative to take action, as rePurpose Global removes and recycles at least as much ocean-bound plastic waste as the partner company produces.
So for every bottle you drink, rePurpose Global activates an army of do-gooders to stop plastic from ruining our waterways. What else can we say except: Hooray you, and hooray to disruptors like Jason Momoa.
