PlasticBusters and how we can all make a difference!

I have always been very passionate about our environment and its preservation. As a child, I had the privilege of joining the Boy Scouts in Spain, my home country, which allowed me to spend most of my youth exploring and enjoying its natural beauty and diversity, and which educated me on the importance of respecting and preserving it as a priceless jewel. This sentiment has followed me my entire life.

My family and I moved to the Island just over three years ago after an international journey that has taken us from Spain to Turkey, then to Italy and now the Isle of Man, and what a fantastic surprise the Isle of Man is...

We have fallen in love with this great island, its beautiful nature, rich history, passion for sports, and above all its people. It seems we have saved the best for last.

One of my passions is spending time outdoors exploring the environment. This pushed me to challenge myself to walk every single road in the Isle of Man last year (over 1,100 kilometres). It was an amazing experience which, unfortunately, also opened my eyes to the amount of waste, and in particular plastic waste, on our roads.

To do my bit, I soon started picking up pieces of plastic in every walk, encouraged by Richard Macnee’s remarkable 3 Pieces of Plastic initiative, which encourages everyone to pick up three pieces of plastic litter every day... so simple!

Bill Dale and his award-winning Beach Buddies have been doing a remarkable job for years, mobilising thousands of volunteers in the Isle of Man to clean the beaches, and becoming a world reference in this respect.

Both of them inspired me to create PlasticBusters in December 2019. A group of people with a shared concern for the amount of plastic litter polluting our environment and willing to actively tackle the issue by raising awareness, influencing key stakeholders in the community, and participating in individual and/or organised group cleaning activities. I am especially thankful to my HSBC Isle of Man colleagues who trusted and supported me from the beginning, making the launch such as success.

Nearly a year now after the launch, we are immensely proud of our achievements. We have attracted already over 1,900 members, with activities taking place regularly in different countries around the globe. Just in the Isle of Man, and despite a challenging year due to this terrible pandemic, we have now carried out 20 group clean-up activities to preserve the ecosystems of this unique UNESCO Biosphere nation, where we have so far collected over 2,700 pounds of litter. And this is only counting our organised group activities, as many of our PlasticBusters continue working hard on their own!

As a testament to all the hard work of our volunteers, we are especially proud for PlasticBusters to have been accepted last month as a Partner of the UNESCO Biosphere Isle of Man.

We use social media as our platform to connect our members, which is proving to be a very effective channel to share ideas and the latest information on this issue, as well as to mobilise our members.

The activities are typically organised during weekends, each involving approximately 10 to 25 volunteers, who, for a period of one to two hours, clean up a section of the road or a specific area. Everything we collect is then separated for proper recycling.

Our activities involve children and parents, to start educating the younger generations as soon as possible as we consider this to be critical to a sustainable future.

And we know this is not enough. Earlier this month we launched an initiative inviting both individuals and businesses to take the pledge to do their best to reduce plastic pollution in their households and work centres. It is encouraging to see that in just a few weeks as many as 250 people and 39 businesses have signed up.

A HUGE thank you to all those that have volunteered and provided us with support!

Together, we can definitely make a difference.

If you would like to learn more about our activities, or join us and become a PlasticBuster, visit our website and/or our facebook page.