About us

Our story

The ocean supports all life on Earth and its health is inseparable from our own. It provides us with half the oxygen we breathe, supports the livelihoods of over three billion people worldwide, and is home to nearly 200,000 identified species (the actual number is likely to be in the millions).

#OneLess is a rapidly growing movement of pioneering and progressive individuals, communities, businesses, NGOs and policymakers, collaboratively striving to reduce the amount of single-use plastic water bottles entering the ocean from the city of London.

Together we are championing London’s refill culture by enabling innovative ways to quench the capital’s thirst and reduce our reliance on single-use plastic water bottles.

We are fostering a culture where using a refillable water bottle is the social norm and we are working to ensure that the systems and infrastructure are in place across the city to support this behaviour.

Who we are

The #OneLess initiative is led by the Zoological Society of London, Forum for the Future, the International Programme on the State of the Ocean and the Thames Estuary Partnership. It is an experiment run by the Marine CoLABoration to encourage more people to value to the ocean. It is designed to be collaborative and inclusive.

The Marine CoLABoration is a group of nine NGOs with wide-ranging interests and areas of expertise working together to increase the impact of solutions to ocean degradation by making a broader range of values – not just short-term economic gain – count in decision-making. It does so by bringing together experts from diverse fields, creating a ‘laboratory’ space to think differently, test new approaches, learn from the results, and then share them widely to influence change. It was established by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in 2015.

#OneLess is supported by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation (UK Branch) and the Oak Foundation, with additional time and resources contributed by the lead groups. It was inspired by the work of Project Ocean, the partnership between Selfridges and ZSL, which began tackling ocean plastic in 2015. Selfridges is one of the pioneers in this movement and continues to support #OneLess today.