Seabin founder Pete Ceglinski battles hard to make ocean-cleaning dream a reality

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Sorry, this video has expired Video: Pete Ceglinski is determined to make Seabin a success (ABC News)

The power went out, and Pete Ceglinski swore.

Key points: Seabin sucks in water and rubbish, which gets caught in a catch bag filter

Team started crowdfunding campaign as they did not want to take start-up money from companies

Marinas, ports around the world have signed on

"F***!"

He knew the camera was recording, but he didn't care.

This moment was almost the final straw for a young, energetic team that has been under extraordinary pressure — and it was all happening with a film crew scrutinising their every move.

It says something about Pete that he only said it once — on camera at least.

The surf-loving Aussie and his small team had less than 24 hours to get their marina-cleaning Seabin product ready to put in the water for an important pilot partner.

And their factory in Palma, Mallorca in Spain was in darkness.

A cold rain was falling.

It was late Thursday afternoon and phone calls to landlords and electrical companies weren't getting them anywhere.

Don't be fooled by the surfer look

But the story of the Seabin Project and the man who now leads the team is a much longer story.

Pete is a man who demands a lot of himself.

And of others.

He and his friend Andrew Turton are the co-founders of the Seabin Project.

They wanted to develop a product that collected floating rubbish in marinas and ports, but also use it to educate people about the damage being done every day to the oceans.

The Seabin sucks in water and rubbish, which gets caught in a catch bag filter.

The water is then pumped back into the marina, leaving the rubbish behind to be disposed of.

It was a gamble for the Seabin team — Pete Ceglinski, Sascha Chapman and Sergio Ruiz Halpern — to let Foreign Correspondent join them for what turned out to be a critical week in their journey of turning their dream into a reality.

For Pete, it's been very personal and one that has seen him spend every cent he has.

Don't be fooled by the surfer look — the mop of curly sun-bleached hair, the casual clothes and ever-present baseball cap.

This is a man who is absolutely ambitious, determined and needs to be in control.

It was a rollercoaster of a week in Mallorca and, even as we've prepared to put this story to air, there have been more high-tension moments.

Pete knows what it's like to be broke.

Not only dead broke, but emotionally bankrupt.

He didn't want to take start-up money from companies that were contributing to the world's pollution problems on one hand while trying to assuage their guilt by funding a feel-good start up on the other.

So they started a crowdfunding campaign.

It started slowly, and then took off at a speed even a team of 10 would have struggled to deal with.

Marinas, ports around world signing on

Pete was living in the factory in Mallorca and his phone would beep every time a new donation came in — hundreds and then thousands of responses.

And he personally would sit there day and night replying to every single of one of them by himself.

Don't ever doubt that Pete's passion for Seabin comes before anything else.

He protects it like it is his first-born child, and he knows where the money's coming from now.

Half-a-dozen pilot partners, marinas and ports around the world have signed on and Pete fights hard to keep them happy.

That moment when the power went out in the factory?

"You couldn't have scripted this," Pete said to us as he flicked fuses in the dark.

We replied: "No Pete, we couldn't script this."

How Seabin's story ends is still unknown.

But if hard work and determination are keys to success, then they're halfway there.

Watch the Saving the Big Blue episode of Foreign Correspondent's story on iview and on YouTube.

Topics: water-pollution, pollution, environment, environment-education, environmentally-sustainable-business, environmental-impact, fish, environmental-management, environmental-technology, environmental-health, australia, spain

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