Pangea Movement — Social Entrepreneurship from Bali | Draper Startup House

While living the nomadic lifestyle in Bali, I met an entrepreneur called Marcos Bulacio.

Marcos and I first met at Draper Startup House in Bali, when I walked in to the common area still wet from the beach to discover him cross-legged on the floor with a collection of foreign-looking instruments spread everywhere. He’d accrued said trinkets from a solid list of countries traveled.

Marcos & I hit it off from there, and with room & board at Draper Startup House, we hung out, island hopped, played his eclectic instruments on idyllic tropical nights and went surfing together.

Jamming with Marcos — he also plays guitar quite well, as it turned out.

Since teaching me to meditate, Marcos has gone on to tackle more relevant problems in the world than my troubled relationship with self. He founded Pangea Movement , a crowdsourced global movement to tackle the global plastic pollution problem one step at a time.

Pangea Movement — social entrepreneurship

Pangea Movement started as a social crowdfunding project for an eco-friendly bamboo travel towel.

Through their crowdfunded towel, Pangea has built an amazing fan base of people with the common desire to do something about the global plastic problem. It was a simple, actionable way for people to help fund the movement through their shopping. The Pangea Towel’s first crowdfunding campaign resulted in $250k USD raised and 13,000 bamboo towels delivered to 5,300 backers in 83 countries. The momentum continues to grow with Pangea Eco Towel version 2.0 in crowdfunding & nearing production in 2021.

A social movement — Pangea Cleanups

But eco-friendly products were not the only solution in Pangea Movement’s arsenal. Marcos is a social entrepreneur on an impact mission. He understands how to leverage retail in the sustainability & conscious consumer vertical for more than addressing a market gap, but to leverage people power to do some good, too.

Pangea Cleanups started as an initiative to leverage the power of their online following to organise plastic cleanups. With that community in mind, they began leveraging existing technologies to become more efficient.

Pangea Movement’s current stats as of time of writing

River Barriers — Science in Startups

80% of all the trash that enters our oceans comes from 1,000 rivers.

Red dots represent polluting rivers. Image Credit: The Ocean Cleanup

The Ocean Cleanup estimates in their latest research publication that there are 1000 rivers, represented by the red dots in the map above, accountable for nearly 80% of global annual riverine plastic emissions, which range between 0.8–2.7 million metric tons per year, with small urban rivers amongst the most polluting.

Rivers as a source of ocean pollution is a well-documented problem in science which the Pangea Movement team has stepped up to solve through social entrepreneurship.

Pangea Movement has run the two most successful cleanup projects in Kickstarter’s history. Like any true modern entrepreneur, Marcos is now leveraging both hardware & software tech to champion his environmental cause, having placed the first river barriers with Sungai Watch in Bali.

Scaling up with token economics — leveraging tech

Blockchain. Cryptocurrency. Coin Offering. With buzzword noise out the way, let’s talk about the Pangea Coin and its real-world impact.

Scaling up river barrier placement with the Pangea Cleanup Coin.

Pangea Movement is scaling its movement by making the plastic cleanup movement actionable for everyday folk through token economics. They did it because it’s a no-brainer, and they are walking the talk (in a space where failed ICOs and rug pulls abound).

With the first river barriers already installed in Bali, Pangea Movement has launched the Pangea Cleanup Coin to leverage token economics to fund & scale up river barrier placement. And with 20,000 wallet holders and growing, they are off to a strong start.

Pangea Movement — a circular economy

Once all that plastic is collected, where should it all go?

Pangea Movement is working on a circular economy model to put all recyclable plastics collected by their river barriers back into recycled products. Personally, I’d much rather see the plastics turned into my favourite apparel than ending up in the fish we eat. By leveraging existing technologies, Marcos Bulacio & Pangea Movement are pioneering impact through conscious consumers. It’s 2021, and somebody should.

#socialentrepreneurship #tokeneconomics #blockchain #cryptocurrency

#conservationtech #environment #onemillionentrepreneursby2030

Draper Startup House & Entrepreneur Network

I wanted to tell Marco’s story for a particular reason — to highlight the power of entrepreneurs to make a huge impact in the world.

Connect with the people in our stories at Draper Entrepreneur Network

Marcos Bulacio is on a long list of cool humans that hang out at Draper Startup Houses around the world (there are many), and I’ll get round to telling some of the other stories soon. Stories like how a 5-minute breakfast exchange resulted in US$8,000.

Story Suggestion: Read about Clearbot, a startup team that tested a prototype of their plastic-cleanup robot swarm at Draper Startup House Bali in 2019. They are now partnered with gaming giant Razer’s US$50m Green Fund.

About the Author

Mike Cee was a guest at Draper Startup House working on an action sports gadget when he met Marcos Bulacio. Post-pandemic, access to people in this once location exclusive community has opened up online at Draper Entrepreneur Network.