For the Oceans – A Morpho Travel Experience project

Morpho has a particular focus on investing a share of revenues from certain items to preserving the world’s oceans – a theme that one sees played out across the Costa Rican tourism market with its marketing of sustainable tourism solutions.

A recent new character to its plush favourites on-shelf is Shelly, a turtle made from plastic bottles that have been taken from the oceans.

The turtle itself is a neat fit for the company – it is a well-known symbol of Costa Rica. The leatherback sea turtle (Tortuga Baula) and the green sea turtle (Carey) among others, arrive by the thousands to nest at specific beaches in the Pacific and Caribbean coasts. This synchronised movement is known in Spanish as the arribada. It also gave Morpho parent Grupo Arribada the inspiration for its name in a rebranding earlier this year.

For every one of the Shelly ‘ambassadors’ sold, the company gives a proportion to a campaign to protect the oceans through NGO The Ocean Clean Up. Not only that, but it promotes that story via QR codes and video in the stores, explaining the work of the organisation and how customers can lend their support to recycling drives and ocean cleaning initiatives too.

There is much more besides. The company stopped delivering plastic bags from 2018, amounting to 4.1 million when considering the sales made up to 2022. The Bring it Back initiative seeks to recover plastic bottles in its shops, send them to recycling chains while Morpho rewards customers and avoids plastic from reaching the oceans.