Coastal clean-up businesses paid by the hotels, with the plastic sold on for recycling

A first step

Walk the stretch of beach in front of three coastal hotels at dawn, photograph the plastic, and weigh what two people clear in an hour. Take the photographs and the weight to each general manager and offer a daily clean at a monthly fee, with a report guests can see. At the same time ask a scrap collector what they pay per kilo for each kind of plastic. A signed month from one hotel is the proof.

Who pays first

A beachfront hotel general manager whose guests complain about rubbish on the sand, and who would rather pay a monthly fee than lose bookings.

What leaves today

Plastic on the beach costs the hotels guests and is thrown away, when sorted and baled it is a raw material with a price.

The idea and the mechanism are from the book. The first step was written for this site as a suggestion; if you know a better one, say so.

The test

Does it keep value that now leaves the island, or build the proof that lets somebody else do so?

The only test any idea on this site has to pass. The four rules that go with it are here.

In the book

• Ch. TwoAn Island Nobody Has Counted
  An ocean eight times the size of the land

More from cluster 13

• 251Sailing charters and a yacht marina at Galle or Trincomalee, with the crew trained here
• 252Diving schools at the wrecks of Trincomalee and the reefs of the east, certified to international standard
• 253Sport fishing charters with catch-and-release, sold to the Gulf and Europe
• 254Sea-cucumber and seaweed farming in the northern lagoons, which Japan and Korea buy
• 255Tuna graded, loined and vacuum-packed at the harbour for the sashimi market, not sold whole
• 256Crab and prawn from the lagoons as a branded chilled export, with the lagoon's name

All 20 ideas in this cluster