Prime’s challenge: Everybody knows that a vacuum cleaner keeps your home clean. But can vacuum cleaners also keep the world clean? Prime’s challenge was to make vacuum cleaners and recycling more engaging. We wanted to identify an environmental problem that wasn’t being talked about, and bring it into the public eye via the simple, everyday activity of vacuuming.The creative idea: We found our solution in the Pacific Ocean: while there is a shortage of recycled plastic on land, our oceans are littered with islands of plastic debris. The idea behind Vac from the Sea was to collect plastic from the world’s oceans and manufacture vacuum cleaners from it.Within its industry, Electrolux is a pioneer in using recycled plastics for its green range of vacuum cleaners. However, few consumers and customers understand the environmental benefits of recycled plastics. The world's oceans are polluted by giant patches of plastic debris, estimated at 100 billion tons in total – a global and greatly severe environmental issue that few people had even heard of before the campaign was launched.

Unlike the recycling of other materials, such as metals, the recycling of plastics is still in its infancy. If big corporations like Electrolux start to create a demand for it by using it in their products, this situation can be changed.

Electrolux simply needed to create a strong case towards consumer and customers, engaging them in the quest for recycling of plastics, while addressing the world – consumers, citizens, corporations – and getting all of us to start recycling more plastics. In other words: to sell the green range of vacs, and do some good for the world.Execution and escalation: Many environmental organizations, together with all parts of Electrolux – from CEO, to design, to sales – worked in an integrated way to realize the project. The prototype “Vacs from the Sea” were exhibited in over ten countries during 2010 – 2012, and part of Green Range revenue is donated through the initiative “Vac for the Sea” to plastic research organizations 5 Gyres and Algalita, headed by Captain Charles Moore – the actual discoverer of the pacific garbage patch.The outcome: By collecting plastic trash from oceans and creating vacuum cleaners from it, Electrolux engaged a reach of over 200 million people in the plastic waste issue (a figure that continues to grow), and increased sales distribution by approx. 300%.