Doug Woodring Keynote Speaker

Douglas Woodring is the Founder and Managing Director of Ocean Recovery Alliance, a non-profit organisation focused on bringing innovation solutions, technology, collaborations and policy together to impact positive improvements for the health of the ocean.

He was the winner of the prestigious 2018 Prince Albert Prize for Innovative Philanthropy for his global work on plastic pollution solutions, and ocean protection.

Two of his international programs were launched at the Clinton Global Initiative in 2010, the Global Alert platform, and the Plastic Disclosure Project (PDP), with the latter being the first plastic footprinting methodology in the world.  He continues to be one of the global thought leaders in creating policy and societal change levers which can bring about large scale impacts for plastic pollution reduction and avoidance.  He has been involved in the UN Plastic Treaty discussions, and was one of the few guest speakers in the recent set of negotiations in Nairobi in November, 2023.

Recent programs include work in Cambodia and Indonesia with the Harvest Plastic Programs, focusing and proving how “Jurisdictional Upswell” can happen across communities to bring positive change, in this case, in the manner the plastic is collected and recovered, which immediately avoids dumping and burning.  All of the programs the group creates, including the Inland Ocean Festival in Cambodia, can also be replicated elsewhere, and this is beginning to be done in Kenya and The Philippines as well.

In 2008 he co-founded Project Kaisei, which focused on the plastic in the North Pacific Gyre, and he is a UNEP Climate Hero for his efforts. Doug Woodring has been on the advisory board of the XPrize, and The Economist’s World Oceans Summit, and in 2011, he co-authored the United Nations Environmental Program Yearbook chapter on the danger of plastic in the ocean.  The group is one of the first NGOs in the world to be working with both UNEP and the World Bank on plastic pollution solutions.  He has been on the Advisory Committee of Wharton’s Institute for Global Environmental Leadership, and is the founder of the Plasticity Forum, first launched at the Rio+20 Earth Summit, and since held in 13 global cities, with the last one in Bangkok at the UNEP Regional Headquarters with over 450 participants. The business conference was the only in the world of its type which focused only on the future of plastic, and where the leaders are going with solutions, innovations, and opportunities, for a world with a reduced waste footprint.  He works with companies to improve their recycling and waste reduction vis-vis plastic, and helped Watsons Water, one of Asia’s biggest bottled water companies, to move to use 100% recycled PET material for its bottles, saving over 75,000,000 bottles per year from being used with virgin material.  He also runs the only ocean film festival in Asia, the Ocean in Motion Film Festival, which was also held in Portugal in 2015, and Bangkok in 2017, as well as the Kids Ocean Day Hong Kong event.  He is a much sought after speaker at major environmental conferences, universities and corporate programs.

Mr. Woodring has worked in Asia for over 30 years in a number of industries which have been at the forefront of technology within their sectors, mainly related to the environment and new media platforms. Prior to working with technology startups, while at Merrill Lynch Asset Management Hong Kong in 1998, he proposed the company’s first global environmental technology fund which was later launched in 2001.  He started his career in Japan, working for one of the largest fishing companies in the world, which is partly where his drive for ocean protection originates.

Mr. Woodring is active in the environmental community, and has been the Chairman of the American Chamber of Commerce’s Environmental Committee in Hong Kong, and helped to start the Hong Kong Shark Foundation, dealing with the overfishing of sharks around the world.  He was recently inducted into the Int’l Open Water Swimming Hall of Fame for his innovative contributions to the sport, and was recently named as one of the top 50 “watermen” in the world.  He is also part of the World Open Water Swim Series organizing team.

Born in Northern California, Doug Woodring has a dual master’s degree from The Wharton School (MBA) and Johns Hopkins University, School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) where he studied Environmental Economics.  He has an undergraduate degree in Economics and Political Science from the University of California at Berkeley.