Rob Vanoli leads Reclaimed Earth Limited. He has an engineering background and has worked in tech and manufacturing, including medical production. He has spent much of his life on and in the water. His guides on plastic credits and plastic waste are listed below.
The claims should never be bigger than the work.
Rob Vanoli
Why plastic
Rob's interest started long before plastic credits. Since he was young, he has taken part in beach clean-ups and recorded what was collected.
Once you start paying attention to the waste, you look at the beach differently. You're still seeing somewhere you love, but you're also seeing what has been left behind or washed ashore.
Sailing, diving, kiting and surfing kept him close to the coast. With an interest in science, he thinks beyond the piece of plastic you can pick up: where it came from, how it breaks down and what happens to the smaller fragments.
There's frustration in that, but also a sense of responsibility. The sea has given me a huge amount of enjoyment. I want to contribute something back.
How Reclaimed Earth started
Through his work in tech and manufacturing, Rob already knew carbon credits. In medical production he had seen the quantities of plastic involved, including PET pellets.
His business partner, who is from India and lives in Berlin, came across a plastic collection project in India and asked a practical question: "How could we fund this?" That question became Reclaimed Earth. Rob chose to begin in the UK, closer to home, where the company could build relationships and understand the work directly.
How he judges a project
My first question is: "Can you show me what actually happens to the plastic?"
Rob wants to see the whole journey: who collects the plastic, how it is weighed and recorded, where it goes next and what evidence supports each step. He has visited OAR, one of Reclaimed Earth's partner projects in India, several times. What stood out to him there was the energy and commitment of the people involved, and their approach to bringing informal waste workers into community collection.
He looks at the people as closely as the process: how workers are treated and paid, and whether a project makes sense for the community around it.
Having worked with plastic materials in production, I know that collecting something and making it useful again are different challenges.
What he will and won't say
Rob avoids "plastic neutral", "zero impact" and "saving the planet". In his words, they are big claims with little gravitas in the real world. He prefers to say what was collected, what was reused, who did the work and what was learned.
The value I hope we create is lasting: cleaner waterways, fair treatment for workers, and materials that stay in use.
Plastic credits borrow their design from carbon credits: tonnes, baselines, audits, registries. Where they differ, and what plastic must learn from carbon.
No, you can't walk on it or see it from space. What the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is, how big it is, what it's made of and where the plastic comes from.
Who writes the rules, who checks the evidence and where the records live. How the main plastic credit standards verify a credit, and how to check one yourself.
What plastic credits can and cannot do for a UK business, how to choose them, what drives the cost and how to word your claim under the CMA Green Claims Code.
What the main critiques of plastic credits say, where they are right, where they go too far, and what separates a credible credit from a marketing shortcut.
How India's EPR certificates and the Philippines' EPR Act work, how they differ from voluntary plastic credits, and what that means for collection on the ground.
Recycling, co-processing in cement kilns, energy recovery and landfill: where collected plastic goes, what each route means and what a plastic credit should tell you.
What extended producer responsibility means, how packaging EPR works in the UK, the EU, India, the Philippines, Vietnam and Indonesia, and how it differs from plastic credits.
How much plastic waste Indonesia produces, the national targets and rules, how collection works and what to check before funding plastic credits there.
The six principles of the CMA Green Claims Code applied to plastic: recycled, recyclable, plastic-free and plastic credit claims, with UK rulings and examples.
Rob Vanoli is the CEO of Reclaimed Earth Limited (Companies House 17392812), which works with plastic recovery projects and has a commercial interest in plastic credits.
