The corporation I chose to focus on was O’Neill, a surfing company founded by Jack O’Neill in 1952. Roughly ten years after opening his first surf shop in San Francisco, O’Neill moved to Santa Cruz in order to “go full force into the wetsuit business, [as well as] expanding the line to feature different styles and women’s fit.” The company continued to do so even after Jack’s death in 2017. Like many other sports based corporations, O’Neill sponsors high-profile and young promising surfers, boarders, and skiers.
However, that is not the only thing that the company has set out to do. In 1996 O’Neill started the O’Neill Sea Odyssey, a free, non-profit program that educates students about marine environment. The program solely runs on donations and grants in order to provide free education courses for students who specifically come from a disadvantaged background in Santa Cruz County. The curriculum and concepts are divided into three groups for the students: marine biology, ecology, and navigation. Teachers who enroll their students in the courses can also utilize the programs web-based classroom curriculum before and after the main three hour course at the Santa Cruz Harbor.(OSO)
The O’Neill brand has tried to become involved as much as possible in various other causes and ways to support the environment, such as creating O’Neill Blue. With the motto of Our Ocean Mission, O’Neill Blue was made as an initiative to get rid of the plastic waste in the ocean. The clothing collection consists of sustainable surf wear that is produced from threads by Bionic that contain recycled plastic. “Without clean oceans and clean waves we would exist as an organization. It is our responsibility as an organization founded on the surf to help save our oceans.”(O’Neill Blue). According to the O’Neill website, the first O’Neill Blue Spring Summer collection that launched in 2015, consisting of boardshorts, walk shorts, and t-shirts, was estimated to have removed 200,000 bottles from beaches and shorelines worldwide. Since the start of O’Neill Blue, the company is trying to continue adding more and more sustainable products in their collection, and plan to have 50% sustainable products in their collection by 2021. “Our journey is never finished. It’s an ongoing exercise where we learn, collaborate, improve and share. All with the goal of actively and steadily reducing the environmental footprint that we leave behind.” (O’Neill Blue). However this grand plan cannot be done alone, O’Neill partners with other companies such as Repreve, Econyl, Waste2Wear, and Organic Cotton to produce their collection.
When Jack O’Neill first invented the wetsuit, he did it because he simply “just wanted to surf longer” (O’Neill). From the start the O’Neill brand had been profoundly connected to water “Over half of our oxygen comes from the ocean. I think if the ocean goes, we do too”(Jack O’Neill). With the various amounts of programs and partnerships that O’Neill offers, their pursuit to save the ocean will improve and keep moving forward for years to come.
Citations
- Wikipedia contributors. “O’Neill (brand).” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 17 Feb. 2020. Web. 24 Mar. 2020.
- O’Neill. 2020. O’Neill Boardshorts & Clothing Official US Store. https://us.oneill.com/pages/about-jack-oneill
- O’Neill. 2020, O’Neill Blue- Our Ocean Mission. https://www.oneill.com/eu/en/shop/inspiration/collections/oneill-blue
4. O’Neill Sea Odyssey. 2020. O’Neill Sea Odyssey | Ocean Conservation For Kids | Protection And Preservation Of Our Living Sea And Communities. http://oneillseaodyssey.org/
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