The dial is also plastic, finished with printed lumed indices and an attractive 3D wave texture, which adds plenty of visual interest. A chunky handset with contrast pops of colour ensures easy readability. Around the edge of the dial, the chapter ring features printed ‘TIME FOR OCEANS’ text, highlighting the message of the watch. The crystal is mineral glass, which offers decent impact protection and scratch resistance, though slightly inferior to sapphire. But at this price point, it’s a reasonable choice.

Related: Green Gear Guide

The watch also has a stainless-steel crown and caseback, resulting in a decent water resistance of 100m or 10 ATM. While that’s perhaps not enough to make this a true dive watch in the technical sense, it’s more than adequate for swimming, paddleboarding and snorkelling. So, the TRIWA Sub is a good choice for summer holidays and outdoor adventures.

Dimensions

This is a fairly compact watch, with a 40mm case that will suit most wrists, both male and female. Thanks to the use of lightweight plastic, it doesn’t feel heavy or unwieldy – in fact, it’s easy to forget you’ve got it on at all. And even though the exposed crown protrudes a little from the case, we didn’t find that it dug into our hand or snagged on cuffs or sleeves.

The TRIWA Sub comes on a 20mm two-piece strap made from robust nylon webbing. This is a common strap size, so if you wanted to switch it up, it’s easy to do so – in fact, we put our test sample on a green and yellow elasticated ‘Marine Nationale’-style from Hawkrigger, as you might spot in some of the pics.  

Features

The TRIWA Sub is powered by a Japanese Miyota 2015 quartz movement, which is a cheap and reliable three-hand movement that pretty much allows you to set and forget the time. It also features a date window, placed at 3 o’clock on the dial. Unfortunately, the window itself is pretty small and hard to read, which limits its usefulness. In all honesty, we’d have probably preferred a cleaner, no date dial – but it’s no biggie.

A unidirectional 60-click plastic bezel with infilled and painted 60-minute markers adds elapsed time functionality, just like a traditional dive watch. The bezel action isn’t the crispest, and does have a little bit of play, but it is well-aligned and functional.

The lume on the hour and minute hands as well as the dial indices isn’t the brightest or longest-lasting we’ve seen either, but again, it does the job. It’s a slight shame that there’s no lume pip on the bezel though. Ultimately, however, to criticise perceived shortcomings of this watch is sort of missing the point. Really, TRIWA want people to be talking about the issues facing our seas and oceans, not whether we like the styling, design or features.

Conclusion

This is a fun adventure watch with a serious message. It takes the classic looks of a Submariner dive watch and reinterprets the design in eco-friendly ocean plastic, making a statement about sustainability, style and status.

“If you care about the planet, you’ll probably appreciate the aims and ambitions of TRIWA’s Time For Oceans project.”

On the wrist, it’s compact, comfortable and extremely lightweight. And while plastic won’t be as robust as stainless steel or titanium in terms of outright toughness, this is still a functional and practical outdoor watch. We like all the colourways, but were especially drawn to the ocean seaweed green version, which looks particularly ‘adventure-ready’, whether on land or sea. 

In many ways, you could argue that the TRIWA Time for Oceans watches share the same appeal and aesthetics as classic Swatch watches. That brand has recently been responsible for arguably the biggest watch release of the year – the ‘Moonswatch’, a collaboration with luxury watch brand Omega that essentially reinterprets their iconic Speedmaster as an affordable quartz chronograph. Just like the TRIWA Sub, the Moonswatch is also made of a more sustainable material – Swatch’s Bioceramic, a blend of ceramic and bio-based plastic. However, TRIWA’s Ocean Plastic is both more innovative and more sustainable than Swatch’s Bioceramic material, and in that sense the TRIWA Sub deserves to have made a bigger splash than Swatch’s frankly overhyped Moonswatch.  

Moreover, unlike the Moonswatch, TRIWA aren’t just playing on the cachet of a luxury name or iconic design to boost sales figures, despite this being ostensibly a ‘Submariner’. Instead, TRIWA is helping to get plastic out of our oceans, whilst also raising awareness for an environmental issue that is of vital importance. There’s no such virtuous cause at the heart of Swatch’s Moonswatch. I guess what we’re saying is that if you want a plastic watch this summer, you should definitely buy the TRIWA.

It’s priced at £139.   

Full Specifications

TIDE Ocean Plastic 100% recycled case and strap | Stainless steel case back | Miyota 2015 quartz movement with date window | 100m/10 ATM water resistance | Mineral glass crystal | Signed ‘smiley face’ knurled crown | Nylon ‘Zulu’ two-piece webbing strap with metal keepers and buckle.

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