What a year it’s been for Trash Hero!

Since the last Christmas newsletter, when we proudly announced 42 chapters, our organisation has continued to be at the forefront of ‘glocal’ environmental action. In 2018, as the world finally opened its eyes to the scourge of single use plastic and the damage it is causing to our planet and our health, we saw a phenomenal growth in the amount of people ready to stand up and take action on waste in their communities.

The number of local Trash Hero chapters, including fledgling groups, now stands at more than 100 (official figures will follow early next year). With a new mentoring program in place, we look forward to seeing them take flight over the coming months.

Throughout this expansion, our core focus has stayed the same: education through action. Our existing chapters continue their weekly cleanups – many now well on the way to 200 events – with as strong a spirit and passion as ever. The bottle refill network expanded to hundreds of new businesses; and we standardised program quality across our network with written guidelines in the comprehensive volunteer Handbook.

One side effect of the rising public awareness of plastic pollution has been a corresponding leap in frustration, or even anger at the lack of waste management infrastructure and perceived local apathy. Our challenge has been to harness this passion and transform it into something positive.

In this respect, the Trash Hero family meetings – national conferences held twice a year to give our volunteers the opportunity to share knowledge and ideas, and receive training – have again proved an essential tool to motivate and empower our growing movement.

At the meeting in Bangkok this October, one new volunteer, Fah, from Trash Hero Koh Samed [pictured above], movingly described how Trash Hero, and the conference, had helped “restore [her] faith in humanity”, after months of struggling and feeling helpless at the waste situation on her small Thai island.

Together with her team, she went on to engage the residents, including government agencies, to take action – not just with weekly cleanups, but reducing and recycling – and recently the island administration has moved to ban plastic bags with immediate effect.

For me, it is stories like this, rather than statistics – although we do have an impressive record! – that make Trash Hero special. Unlike many environmental organisations, our movement is fuelled not by anger, but by hope. And we hear dozens of similar stories from around the globe, of ordinary people being inspired by our work, and harnessing that energy to help their communities.

This sense of hope has further increased with the launch of our kids’ program in May 2018. With donations from the initial crowdfunding campaign and other sponsorship, to date 10,500 English and local language books have been distributed free to chapters in Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia. To see children of all backgrounds engage with the story and take the issues to heart in their daily lives has been one of the highlights of the year.

Having readily available, branded resources such as the books; the high-visibility t-shirts; reusable bottle and bag stock; professionally designed marketing materials; educational videos; and communication tools, all enable our volunteers to have maximum impact at zero cost in manpower. It’s a huge return on investment.

This year alone, Trash Hero volunteers have given at least 93,000 hours of their time for free. Most have full time jobs. It’s an astonishing figure and one that shows the dedication of the our global family.

In May, we crossed an important bridge, by appointing one person within the organisation to work full time, on program support and development. We have grants to finance this employment for a year; with more funding, this can be extended and hopefully increased to sustain a full team of key staff.

We are deeply grateful to the foundations and individuals who believe in our mission and our ability to deliver change, and so provided the vital core funding to make this happen. Initiatives like the kids’ program we developed could not have happened without it.

Having dedicated staff also made apparent just how essential this type of long term core funding is to ensure we can transition to a scalable and professional organisation, while maintaining our impact.

With this in mind, we are also developing other revenue streams within Europe that tie in to our mission and build on the growing presence of Trash Hero in this region. Last February saw the launch of a range of personal care products in collaboration with Swiss manufacturer Schnarwiler, with all-natural, organic and microplastic-free ingredients that are packaged in glass bottles and refillable.

The range was nominated for the Sustainable Beauty Awards 2018, reaching the final in November alongside products from Aveda, L’Oréal and Weleda.

Shop the Trash Hero – Schnarwiler product range

The Trash Hero @ Work program continues to expand: this year we finalised a project with Credit Suisse in Poland to replace all of its disposable plastic cups, glasses and cutlery with reusable versions – including a customised Trash Hero bottle – for its 5000+ employees, saving millions of items from ending up in landfill. Corporate outreach work is ongoing with clients such as Zurich Insurance and XL Catlin.

As we grow, we are conscious of the fact that we are first and foremost a grassroots organisation: the volunteers come first, and change happens locally. So as we develop our organisational structure (with the help of more volunteers!) we intend to keep this philosophy, with a lean central support team and efficient and transparent use of resources.

Decision making will continue to be done by consensus, with new national organisations in Southeast Asia to represent the local chapters. The nonprofit, Yayasan Trash Hero Indonesia, was the first such group to register in November, with the support of the Prince of Ubud. A roadmap is also in place to register the organisation in Thailand, Malaysia and Myanmar; Czech Republic and the UK have already completed their paperwork.

Partnerships continue to be important for Trash Hero at all levels of the organisation. On September 15, our co-founders, Roman Peter and Jan Bares, along with local leaders Rima Agustina, Wayan Aksara, Monica Chin, Ulrika Player, Intawha Saisopa, Teerasak Suamcheepmasau, and many, many others mobilised thousands of volunteers in their countries for “World Cleanup Day”.

Particular mention must be made of Indonesia, where more than 7.5 million people turned out to clean their country, only weeks after the series of earthquakes that devastated parts of the region (including some of our areas of operation) in August.

Also in Indonesia, our new partner, Making Oceans Plastic Free, supplies us with handmade shopping bags, using rPET fabric from recycled plastic waste. We sell the bags on at cost in areas where single use plastic bags are prevalent.

Meanwhile the Bamboo School children’s refuge in Thailand received so many plastic-filled ecobricks from our national campaign, they were able to finish their planned classroom building and start on a dining room and girls’ dormitory.

2018 was also a great year for Trash Hero in terms of our media exposure: highlights include recognition from the Prime Ministers of Thailand and Myanmar, the Princess of Kedah, the UN Environment Programme, BBC and Thomson Reuters, who all praised our work and brought it to an audience of millions.

Our own volunteers took part in exhibitions and conferences in Australia, China, USA and Singapore (among others) to raise awareness of the issues of plastic pollution and the solutions we propose.

In short, with all that is going on inside and outside the movement, it is an exciting time to be a Trash Hero!

Although it is not possible to mention you all by name, as this year draws to a close, we’d like to thank every single person who has contributed to our success, both financially and with hands and hearts. We are humbled and encouraged by your kindness and commitment to a cleaner future.