A new waste management entity was being born with a mission to progressively and urgently eliminate single-use plastics from the ocean, inspiring a behavioral change that prevented urban waste and aimed for a cleaner and purer planet.

Single-use plastic is an exotic and invasive species that can be found in seas and coastlines around the world. Available in many colors and shapes, some being transparent and even invisible. It moves fast with winds and sea currents, and easily adapts to all ecosystems – already existing in the Challenger Deep, the deeper place in the ocean that is not even reachable by people.

Humans have created this and humans are the only species able to extinguish it.

PUURO is a place where planet and plastics start with the same letters but have different endings. Here, single-use plastics production and consumption is limited and the awareness for a cleaner world is wider. “Puro” means pure in Portuguese and single-use plastics translates to “plásticos de utilização única” or “PUU”.

We wanted the brand identity to reflect this idea of reduction heading for neutrality. Also, being the first to focus on drastically limiting single-use plastic production and consumption in Portugal, this new association was about to place themselves as pioneers and specialists, making its identifiability a brand enabler.

We started by switching environmental awareness and human action on. These switches inspired the typography and the whole visual universe. The circle in the switches – or the “O” in PUURO – works as an enzyme to “clean” single-use plastics from our communication pieces.

When the background footage shows examples of polluted oceans, the path made by the enzyme on top of it unravels a clean ocean image. A visual contrast of two realities, the before and the after, the one we live in and the one we’re aiming for with PUURO.