Dri’s FAQ

What is ocean-bound plastic?

Ocean-bound plastic is defined as “abandoned plastic waste located within 50km from shores where waste management is inexistent or inefficient.” Most ocean-bound plastic is found in the developing world (predominately Southeast Asia) as those countries are where the United States and many other first world countries ship their plastic waste to prevent visible pollution within our borders.

Why do you us ocean-bound plastic, and not ocean plastic?

If you have a bath tub overflowing with water, what’s the first thing you do? You don’t grab a bucket and start throwing water out - you shut off the tap. So at Dri, we’re turning off the tap on ocean plastic, rather than fishing it (pardon the pun) out of the sea. We’re intercepting the plastic before it has the opportunity to damage our marine eco-systems.

We spoke to a lot of oceanologists and scientists during the R&D phase of building Dri, and they all said the best way address this crisis is to stop the influx of plastic going into our oceans. Fortunately, we also have organizations like The Ocean Cleanup out in gyres like the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, working in tandem with Dri. We’re doing our part to intercept the plastic and ensure TOC succeeds and isn’t out there forever. We need to work together, in both prevention and cleanup, to solve this problem.

Where do you get this plastic?

The plastic we’re currently using is cleaned from the beaches and coastlines of Thailand, a country heavily polluted by imported plastic. It’s gathered along coastlines between Bangkok and Rayong.

How do I know the fabric is actually recycled plastic?

The fabric mill we work with specializes in only recycled fibers. They are also OceanCycle certified, the organization that’s really the North Star in the ocean plastic space. We love our women at the fabric factory, Lily and Chloe. They’re wonderful. The amount of emojis we have in our emails is adorable.

Why are Dri umbrellas pricier than my $7.99 Walgreens umbrella?

As a team who resonates with old The Christmas Tree Shop slogan “Don’t you just love a bargain?” we cringed when we did the math and calculated what a Dri umbrella needed to cost. Here is a breakdown of why:

• One: From the community gatherers, to the recycling centers, to the fabric mill, to the umbrella factory, we want everyone associated in Dri’s supply chain to have fair wage, safe jobs. Because of this, the supply chain and cost of raw goods are more expensive.

• Two: We pay more for recycled plastic, rather than cheap virgin plastic that perpetuates plastic pollution and expedites climate change. Simple as that.

• Three: Durability. All of the umbrellas we’ve purchased for $7.99 have snapped or broken -typically after only one or two uses. They end up in landfills (1.1 billion annually), slowly emitting more greenhouse gases into the environment as they decay. Dri umbrellas were designed to withstand the most difficult weather.

• Four: Packaging. To align with our mission, we want every Dri umbrella to have recyclable packaging, made from recycled materials. Aka, wrapped in gold.

• Five: Offsetting. Our supply chain is looooong. Trust us - we’ve had to rebuild it three times. While we’re proud to be creating good paying jobs all along that supply chain, we recognize while we’re preventing plastic from flowing into the oceans, we’re emitting carbon into it. Because of that, we’re exploring relationships with companies that calculate and offset our carbon footprint. If you have any thoughts on how to make a supply chain more sustainable, we’d LOVE to hear from you. Please. We lose sleep over this one, so, please.

Are Dri umbrellas manufactured overseas?

They sure are. While we understand that is taboo, we can’t apologize for it. We searched high and low for umbrella manufacturer in the USA and came up with… nada. Turns out, over 92% of the world’s umbrellas are made in China. After we discovered this, we took our time, pondering what our best manufacturing options would be. Ultimately went back to our mission - to protect our oceans by making you strong, long-lasting umbrella that wouldn’t end up in landfills. We knew in order to do so, we needed to go where the world’s umbrella experts live. Fast forward to today - we freakin’ adore the factories we work with. They are safe, clean, and filled with some of the most hardworking, accommodating people we’ve ever had the pleasure of working with. We value them as partners - they too are seeking out a more clean, just planet. We are just grateful they have lent their expertise and agreed to take on the enormous challenge of ocean plastic with us. They took a leap of faith with us - this is the first time umbrellas from ocean-bound plastic have ever been made.

If you have issues with products manufactured in China, we understand. Truly. But they are a valued part of the Dri family - if they aren’t for you, neither are we.

What’s Dri’s return policy?

One year for a return with a full refund. Regardless of how long you’ve had the umbrella, however, you can send it to us at any time for repair. We’ll ship it back to you, free of charge. Lifetime replacement guarantees are part of what makes our society view umbrellas as disposable. But as we know, there is no such thing as “disposable” plastic. Plastic stays on our planet forever. So rather than a lifetime guarantee, we have a lifetime repair guarantee. We want to repair whenever possible, rather than send a Dri umbrella to landfill unnecessarily.

Please let us know what questions we haven’t answered above, and we’ll add them here!