Ulysse Nardin Cares about the Environment

The watchmaking company has devoted its attention to the environment this year and is pulling out all the stops, something which Ulysse Nardin is famous for.

October saw the world premiere of Ulysse Nardin’s new R-Strap made of 100% recycled fishing nets. The manufacturer announced it would be partnering with diver Ben Lecomte, who swam more than 300 nautical miles through the world's largest vortex of marine garbage, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, who saw the massive scale and urgency of plastic pollution in our oceans with his own eyes.

It's estimated that 46% of the garbage patch is comprised of fishing nets. On top of that, 640 000 tons worth of fishing nets get lost or discarded in the oceans every year. These frightening figures reflect an almost infinite source of raw materials that can be recycled.

Another impressive new concept Ulysse Nardin has come up with is the Diver Net watch case made from upcycled fishing nets, recovered and transformed into polyamide pellets by French start-up hotshots Fil & Fab. The caliber UN-118 has been "submerged" in a 44 mm case, while the Diver Net case itself is attached to a strap woven from reels of thread made by the Swiss company Tide. The thread itself is of course made of recycled PET plastic "garbage" from the sea.

And that's not all. The Vendée Globe round-the-world yacht race gets off to a start on November 8, and sailors participating in the race will navigate over 40 000 km solo, unassisted and non-stop. Ulysse Nardin will be the official timekeeper of the regatta. Before its participants set sail, another athlete on the Ulysse team will get a headstart. Snowboarder Mathieu Crépel will hit the slopes from the Pic du Midi in the French Pyrenees, where he'll collect a piece of ice at the peak and bring it to the yacht race's starting point in Les Sables-d'Olonne.

The goal of this journey is simple: to show that microplastics are already falling from the sky in the snow that ends up on mountain tops. It's time to stop this pollution. A watch made from recycled fishing nets may seem like just a drop in the ocean, but isn't the ocean just lots of tiny drops?