Imagine a world where everyone understands the impact of plastic on our bodies, health, and environment, and supports real solutions to the plastics crisis. A world where businesses prioritise preventing waste and the health and well-being of people and the planet.
Every week, Trash Hero volunteers are working in their communities to make this dream a reality. This year, we welcomed 14 new chapters to the Trash Hero family, and the USA and Japan rejoined our growing network. We’re now active* in 103 locations across 15 countries (Cambodia, Czech Republic, Germany, Indonesia, Japan, Kuwait, Malaysia, Myanmar, Poland, Serbia, South Korea, Switzerland, Thailand, USA, and Vietnam).
Let’s take a look at the impact each of our core programmes has made:
Action and Awareness:
In 2024 alone, Trash Hero volunteers organised 2,446 community cleanups, mobilising 46,501 volunteers, including 17,036 under 16s! Together, they collected 105.2 tonnes of trash!
This brings the total impact of our Action and Awareness programme from December 2013 to December 2024 to:
- 23,304 cleanups organised
- 562,144 volunteers mobilised (including 154,918 under 16s)
- 2,601,608 kg of trash collected
Trash Hero Communities:
Trash Hero volunteers, through their consistent action, are given opportunities to share their knowledge and inspire others. This includes giving presentations, building zero-waste projects, and providing input at policy discussions. In 2024, Trash Hero volunteers organised or participated in 173 community events, engaging 13,537 people in the issues surrounding plastic pollution and the actions needed to solve it.
Since 2022, Trash Hero volunteers have engaged 25,685 people in 463 events.
Our Trash Hero Communities programme includes our free water refill network, which currently consists of 579 participating businesses. In 2024 alone, these businesses have helped prevent the use of 1.9 million single-use plastic bottles, avoiding 104.4 tonnes of CO2 emissions! Since the project began, we have:
- distributed 111,068 reusable water bottles.
- avoided 42.5 million single-use plastic bottles and 2,219.6 tonnes of CO2 emissions.
Kids and Education:
Our Trash Hero Kids programme is based on a story and activity book that engages young people in the issues of plastic pollution. In 2024, 585 kids enrolled in the programme – which over time encourages long-term behaviour change. We also ran 70 one-off awareness events for kids, introducing 5,401 under 16s to the critical issues of plastic pollution. This brings our total since we started recording in 2022, to 289 kids’ events, involving 14,510 kids!
In total, 23,330 copies of our kids’ story and activity book have been printed, and it’s available in 8 different languages.
Thank you to all of our volunteers and supporters – we could not have achieved this without you!
Join us in creating the world we deserve, a world free from plastic pollution.
Watch our latest impact video here:
*Active chapters are those regularly organising Trash Hero events. If a chapter leader steps down and there is no one to replace them, or the team want to take a break for 3 months or longer, the chapter is “inactive” and not included in our reporting.
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