Meet The Plastic Pollution Innovators Helping Our Sea Turtles & Plastic Program
Our Sea Turtles & Plastic program has completed four years of funding efforts to remove plastic waste from sea turtle habitats and support community recycling efforts. Over those years, we’ve provided more than 60 grants to dozens of organization in more than 20 countries. These efforts are working, more than half a million pounds have been collected from nesting beaches and feeding grounds, with more than 40,000 lbs of plastic collected. These grants have supported more than 600 local residents and generated more than $10,000 in benefits to conservation and coastal communities.
As we enter our next phase of this program, we brought on leaders in this field to advise us on how to improve outcomes from these programs and support more of these programs.
Our new advisors are:
Sabine Berendse: Green Phenix (Curacao). Green Phenix is social enterprise driving sustainable development by catalyzing circular and inclusive economies.
Steve Trott: EcoWorld Recycling (Kenya) - EcoWorld’s mission is to formalize a waste collector sector of women and youth to power the plastics circular economy at the Kenya coast, bringing social, economic and environmental benefits.
Laura Exley: Tortugas de Osa (Costa Rica) - Tortugas de Osa has developed a local recycling program that works with the local community to provide income and reduce pollution in an important turtle habitat. They are also now working with the local municipality to explore options to improve recycling efforts.
Dr. Christine Figgener: COASTS (Costa Rica) - Chris has become a leading advocate in the effort to reduce ocean plastic since her viral video of the turtle with a straw coming out of its nose. COASTS works on Costa Rica’s Caribbean coast to protect nesting hawksbill and leatherback turtles.
Daniel Quilter: Fuze EcoTeer (Malaysia) - Fuze is an accredited social enterprise that focuses on conservation and community projects including community recycling programs and turtle research.
Green Phenix’s Recycling Center in Curacao
Beach cleanup by COASTS in Costa Rica
We’re excited to implement advice from these incredible folks including offering more multi-year grants, exploring more ways to support our partners in developing markets for their products, improving our grant process, and connecting our partners together to scale up their impact.
In addition, we are supporting the efforts of these advisors with grants to support their work including:
Tortugas de Osa: We are supporting the purchase of a new solar inverter to help power their recycling machines and to purchase an injection mold to diversify their recycled product production. In addition, they will run a coordinated community beach cleanup.
EcoWorld: This donation will support the construction of an ocean plastics and fishing gear collection center in the Watamu Marine Reserve in Kenya. The centre will act as a collection point for local community beach cleaners and fisher groups to bring plastic and gears in return for payment per kilogram from EcoWorld Recycling.
Fuze EcoTeer: This grant will be used to buy a new mould for our precious plastic machine which we will use to make letters so we can make personalised recycled plastic jewelery. Fuze will also organise a clean up in the mangrove areas on the west coast of Peninsular Malaysia at the mouth of the Klang river which is one of the top 3 contributors to the ocean plastic problems in Southeast Asia.
Green Phenix: SEE Turtles and Green Phenix are exploring a unique collaboration that blends education, conservation, and circular design: a souvenir series featuring four iconic sea turtle species: Leatherback, Loggerhead, Hawksbill, and Green Turtle.