Glasgow start-up POTR create Ocean Pot using marine waste
POTR, based in Glasgow, developed the Ocean Pot using discarded fishing gear recovered from UK coastlines.
Each pot has a QR code linking it to the specific beaches and harbours where the material was found.
This comes amid concerns over marine pollution.
Read more: Band behind Teenage Dirtbag to perform iconic debut album in full in Glasgow
Scotland generates significantly more plastic waste from the fishing and aquaculture industry than England.
Andrew Flynn, POTR's founder, said: "I was in Skye recently, and while it's one of the most beautiful places in the world, the amount of marine waste on the west coast is staggering.
"Waste is choking our shoreline – surely there is something that can be done to make it useful.
'We're huge admirers of Waterhaul and the work they do, and to partner with them is a major step forward.
"Traceability makes it real for people.
"The more transparent the journey, the more it sparks conversations and makes people realise they can be part of the solution."
The Ocean Pot's origami-inspired design ensures it can be shipped flat-packed, reducing transport emissions by up to 100 times compared to traditional ceramic or plastic pots.
Once unfolded, a self-watering system using a cotton cord helps plants control hydration with minimal waste.
POTR's initial Ocean Pot release in 2022 sold out quickly, but scaling production proved challenging due to fragmented supply chains.
Its new partnership with Waterhaul – specialists in recovering, recycling, and manufacturing adventure products from marine plastic in the UK – enables POTR to meet increasing demand.
Read more: 'Wildly excited': Date revealed for award-winning musical's Glasgow premiere
Harry Dennis, co-founder of social enterprise Waterhaul, said: "Ghost gear is the most damaging form of plastic in the sea.
"Working with POTR means we can take that material and turn it into something useful, something beautiful, something people want in their homes.
'They care about the process as much as the product.
"These pots are traceable back to the beach the net came from.
"That level of transparency matters.
"It shows what's possible.
"This could easily be one of the most efficient recycling-to-product models in UK consumer manufacturing."
Since its creation in 2019, POTR has shipped to over 50 countries and secured retail partnerships with Uncommon Goods, John Lewis, and Bloom & Wild.
Its new Ocean Pot will be available for purchase from Friday, 16 May, with prices starting at £22, available exclusively on the POTR website.
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Glasgow Times
19-05-2025
- Glasgow Times
Glasgow start-up POTR create Ocean Pot using marine waste
POTR, based in Glasgow, developed the Ocean Pot using discarded fishing gear recovered from UK coastlines. Each pot has a QR code linking it to the specific beaches and harbours where the material was found. This comes amid concerns over marine pollution. Read more: Band behind Teenage Dirtbag to perform iconic debut album in full in Glasgow Scotland generates significantly more plastic waste from the fishing and aquaculture industry than England. Andrew Flynn, POTR's founder, said: "I was in Skye recently, and while it's one of the most beautiful places in the world, the amount of marine waste on the west coast is staggering. "Waste is choking our shoreline – surely there is something that can be done to make it useful. 'We're huge admirers of Waterhaul and the work they do, and to partner with them is a major step forward. "Traceability makes it real for people. "The more transparent the journey, the more it sparks conversations and makes people realise they can be part of the solution." The Ocean Pot's origami-inspired design ensures it can be shipped flat-packed, reducing transport emissions by up to 100 times compared to traditional ceramic or plastic pots. Once unfolded, a self-watering system using a cotton cord helps plants control hydration with minimal waste. POTR's initial Ocean Pot release in 2022 sold out quickly, but scaling production proved challenging due to fragmented supply chains. Its new partnership with Waterhaul – specialists in recovering, recycling, and manufacturing adventure products from marine plastic in the UK – enables POTR to meet increasing demand. Read more: 'Wildly excited': Date revealed for award-winning musical's Glasgow premiere Harry Dennis, co-founder of social enterprise Waterhaul, said: "Ghost gear is the most damaging form of plastic in the sea. "Working with POTR means we can take that material and turn it into something useful, something beautiful, something people want in their homes. 'They care about the process as much as the product. "These pots are traceable back to the beach the net came from. "That level of transparency matters. "It shows what's possible. "This could easily be one of the most efficient recycling-to-product models in UK consumer manufacturing." Since its creation in 2019, POTR has shipped to over 50 countries and secured retail partnerships with Uncommon Goods, John Lewis, and Bloom & Wild. Its new Ocean Pot will be available for purchase from Friday, 16 May, with prices starting at £22, available exclusively on the POTR website.
Glasgow Times
18-05-2025
- Glasgow Times
Wheatus to perform full debut album at Glasgow's SWG3
Wheatus, whose debut album has sold a million copies worldwide, will come to SWG3 on November 26. The upcoming tour will see the band performing their self-titled debut album in its entirety each night, including the global hit song Teenage Dirtbag. Read more: Glasgow businesses celebrate success at World Championship Scotch Pie Awards Brendan B Brown, Wheatus frontman, said: "It feels truly strange and wonderful. "We've never had the opportunity to take this career for granted - in fact, most of it has been a desperate attempt to keep it going... thinking it would all end any day, but that's not how it turned out. "I think that's been for the best because now we're enjoying something we never thought we'd see. "The feelings of gratitude are overwhelming." Wheatus, who have shared stages with Alice Cooper, Blondie, Busted, and The 1975, and many more, have established themselves as a much-loved band with a legion of fans. The band's hit song, Teenage Dirtbag, has more than 337 million views on YouTube and was even at the centre of a TikTok trend in 2022. The song also made a surprise return to the UK Official Top 40 Singles Chart in 2023. Brendan said: "No matter what level we've been at, and it's been all over the place for us these 25 years - the English, Irish, Welsh, and Scottish audiences, in particular the smaller towns, have always been super keen. "It's as if they won't let you have a bad show." As well as performing all their debut album hits, the band will also be picking fan requests at every show for any other songs from their three-decade career. Read more: Sister raises thousands for brain tumour research in late brother's memory Brown said: "Having cultivated the all-request, no set-list format has meant all the shows, no matter the size, remain intimate, unpredictable and guided by the moods of the crowd. "Which to us is infinitely more exciting to us than rehearsed set-lists could ever be.' "The entire first record is ready to go and will definitely be performed every night... but never in the same order. "We'll be doing the songs as they are shouted out by the crowd. "On the US leg of this tour, we were regularly doing over 20 songs as well as some improv acoustics - all very unpredictable." Tickets for Wheatus's 2025 UK tour are now on sale and available to be purchased from the band's official website.
Scottish Sun
17-05-2025
- Scottish Sun
I detached both my biceps from the bone and only train in my back garden – now I'm competing for World's Strongest Man
ANDREW FLYNN managed to qualify for World's Strongest Man by training in his own back garden. Flynn, 33, will be flying to Sacramento later this month to compete against the biggest and best strongmen from around the globe - all thanks to his "poky little 8x4 single breeze block" home gym. 7 Andrew Flynn has booked his spot at the World's Strongest Man competition using his 'poky little single breeze block' gym Credit: Instagram @flynnflyflynn 7 The Brit is ready to take the US by storm after building his home facility himself Credit: Instagram @flynnflyflynn The former rugby hopeful has been lifting weights since he was 13 and training as a strongman for 10 years, but this will be his first crack at the sport's biggest competition. Flynn fell into strongman when he moved house and realised that he couldn't chase his dreams to be a rugby star and balance his life at home with a new house. He told SunSport: "I used to play a lot of rugby, but I bought a house with my missus and I couldn't play the rugby games and do up a house and start a family all at the same time. 'Instead I started to go to a gym near my new house, and the gym I was training at there was a strongman gym. "They ran Worthing's strongest man and I would see the people there that were training for it. 'So it's kind of one of those things where I wanted to be a rugby player but I couldn't commit to it that much. "And there was this gym here and I could be a strong man and I could give my time to it. So I thought, I'll give it a go." Flynn recalls taking to it "like a fish to water" thanks to his rugby background and his wide frame, but never thought that he would be heading to California to compete for nearly £100,000 just a few years later. 7 Flynn trains outside to help prepare for Sacramento Credit: Instagram @flynnflyflynn 7 Flynn gave SunSport a glimpse inside his garden gym Credit: Andrew Flynn 7 The facility is just enough to help him train Credit: Andrew Flynn CASINO SPECIAL - BEST CASINO BONUSES FROM £10 DEPOSITS Another house move some six years ago meant that he would have to start training in his garden, something that hasn't changed since. Flynn heads outside where he uses a mix of weights and makeshift equipment like sandbags to prepare himself to take on the biggest names in strongman. The 33-year-old, who could show his 'gym' from his window, said: "If I showed you my gym, you think 'no, not a chance he can train for World's Strongest Man'. "Because it literally is just like a pokey little, eight by four single breeze block building. World's Strongest Man launches new career 'And I've personally built an extension on it so I could train out there in the winter because the ceiling was so low when we moved that I couldn't even overhead press in there. So that's why I built like a little lean-to on it.' The East Sussex strongman, who weighs in at nearly 22 stone, used that gym to train for every competition that led up to his qualification for World's Strongest Man. It's been a long process for Flynn, starting with virtual qualification 15 months ago to finishing third in Britain's Strongest Man by just HALF A POINT in February - a competition that sealed his spot in Sacramento. Flynn admits it feels "bizarre" to call himself one of the strongest men in the world, and after the realisation of what was ahead of him felt he needed to at least try and train at a proper gym once a week. 95 per cent of my training that I've done for the past six or seven years has been at the bottom of my garden Andrew Flynn He added: "For the World's Strongest Man I've got a coach in Southampton, and he owns a gym. So on a Saturday, I'll go to him. "But that's not regular, 95 per cent of my training that I've done for the past six or seven years has been at the bottom of my garden'. The home gym is a necessity more than anything, as Flynn balances being a husband, father of two, strongman competitor and holding a full-time job in materials control for Southern Railway. He said: "I can't go to work, come home, travel to a gym, and come back again. It isn't feasible, wouldn't happen. "It's one of those things that I don't have the choice about, if you know what I mean? This is the best that I can do, so this is what I'll do.' 7 Flynn has to balance his full-time job with his strongman training Credit: Instagram @flynnflyflynn Balancing that job means Flynn has an incredible schedule that sees him non-stop working from 6am until around 11pm. He explained: 'I get up at 6am, get on the train up to East Croydon, and then I walk from his East Croydon to Selhurst. I'll do my work and then I'll get back about 4pm. 'Then I've got about two or three hours looking after the kids, put them to bed, and then usually get down to the gym between 7pm or 8pm. And I'll get back from the bottom of my garden at around 10:30pm. 'It's quite intense. You get into it straight away. It's kind of like, you know, getting in, have food, shower, bed and up again at 6am. "It's not optimal for sleep. So I'm tired, but then again, I'm used to that having two kids, so I doesn't really faze me.' That schedule requires Flynn to keep himself fuelled, which is why he and his nutritionist have put together a plan that sees him eat roughly 6,000 CALORIES per day - spending nearly £5,000 per year on his own meals. He describes his meals as "buckets and troughs of food", but knows that eating clean will help give him a competitive edge in the USA. It may sound like an easy ride, nipping down to the bottom of the garden to workout and managing to earn a spot in the World's Strongest Man. But the 6ft 2in muscle man has battled with injuries along the way, suffering from two ruptured biceps - meaning his bicep has literally ripped off the bone - and a slipped disc in his neck. He recalled: "I've detached both my biceps doing strongman. What happens is, because we do this all the time it's normally a lack of concentration. "Sometimes the environment gets to you a bit too much, which I think then means you do something in an error, which then makes you get injured. 'When you rupture your bicep all the nerves go with it. So I couldn't feel it… but you feel a click in your arm. "It's almost like if you clicked your fingers or something like that, but imagine it's your whole bicep. 'I've since had operations to have both of them reattached. Before I had injuries, I thought I was a bit more invincible and I'd be fine. 'Then you have two bicep ruptures and a disc in my neck and now I'm a bit more wary of my body. There's a life after strongman, so I don't want to completely do myself in.' That life would be his wife Ruby and their eight and six-year-old kids, who he has payed out of pocket to bring along to Sacramento with him. Flynn described the gym as "part of his life" and a "non-negotiable", but still sees himself as an underdog when it comes to this month's competition. Discussing his goals in the States, he humbly said: 'I don't have high expectations when you're against 25 of the best guys in the world, not to say that I'm rubbish. "I just want to do what I can do to the best of my ability and I'm hoping maybe that's good enough to get me near.'
