Before you buy your next leather wallet or cotton t-shirt, think about Tidal Vision. Tidal Vision is a company that aims to reduce waste and encourage sustainable fishing. They create t-shirts from a fiber crab shells, and wallets from salmon leather. This company only buys byproduct materials from sustainable fisheries. This encourages their growth.
Tidal Vision uses byproducts because “in Alaska alone, 2 billion pounds of fish and crab byproducts are discarded to rot annually. This waste poses a potential environmental threat when concentrated on the ocean floor.” The purchasing of byproducts removes these materials from buildup in the ocean.
The Alaskan salmon leather wallets are treated with vegetable-based tanning oil. Before Tidal Vision created the vegetable-based tanning oil, tanning required formaldehyde or chrome-based tanning chemicals. The wallet can be purchased in a variety of colors. The crab shell t-shirts are made with chitosan (kyte-oh-san). Chitosan is a renewable, antibacterial, antimicrobic, and antifungal fiber that can be found in crab shells. Tidal Vision then spins the fiber into fabric to create a silky t-shirt that does not absorb odor. The only byproduct created during the production of the t-shirt is a quality fertilizer. Tidal Vision has patented ChitoskinTM, the cloth made from chitosan.
Tidal Vision is helping encourage sustainable fisheries and helping minimize the concentration of by-products on the ocean floor. Fishing is creating a major problem for the oceans currently, and companies like this one are trying to help.
Written by Elise Mazur, 7/8/2015