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Ten years of Plastic Soup Foundation
11 february 2021
Today marks the tenth anniversary of Maria Westerbos’ founding of the Plastic Soup Foundation at her kitchen table. Plastic soup, pollution of the environment by plastic, was hardly known at the time. One of her first goals was that everyone in the Netherlands should know what it was.
The term ‘plastic soup’ was coined by Captain Charles Moore, who came across floating plastic in the middle of the ocean and put the problem on the agenda. Maria visited him in the United States and made him honorary president of her foundation. Ten years later, PSF is an organization with 20 full-time employees, and the word plastic soup has even been included in dictionaries. No one looks up anymore in surprise and asks, “What kind of soup?”
DAVID VERSUS GOLIATH
Maria and the volunteers from the very beginning could not have imagined that the subject would have so many facets. They fell from one surprise to the next. How can cosmetic companies get it into their heads to use plastic as an ingredient in their personal care products, knowing that all those microplastics will wash down the drain? How is it possible that the plastics industry is so careless with their raw material that billions of tiny grains (nurdles) are spilled every year and enter the environment? How to explain that supermarkets preach sustainability but use all their lobbying power to oppose the introduction of a deposit scheme?
The battleground was immense, and the early years of the PSF inevitably had the impression of a David against Goliath fight.
ROLLER COASTER
Maria and her young organization found themselves on a rollercoaster. So many topics, interests, opinions, and responsibilities, while one scientific report after another pointed to seriousness of the plastic soup.
Where to start? How do you manage it? There appeared to be only one answer; learning by doing, and that is only possible with a team of committed people and an inspiring leader who always looks a few steps ahead.
Harmen Spek, manager of Innovations & Solutions, remembers the Three Days Event Maria organized at the end of 2011. Then she brought together scientists, parliamentarians, and inventors. It was as if it was in the air, so many people came to this then still new subject and realized its seriousness. People presented the wildest ideas for cleaning up the plastic soup. That was an instructive period. We learned to distinguish claptrap from real solutions and could build a network of concerned specialists and supporters.
CAMPAIGNS AT THE CORE
The PSF’s mission is easy to explain; in order to combat plastic in the environment, where it does not break down naturally but instead breaks down into micro and nanoplastics and in any form leads to all kinds of environmental damage, we must prevent any release of plastic into the environment.
From this basic idea, Maria and her ever-expanding team developed campaigns with resounding names. Jeroen Dagevos, head of programs: ‘With campaigns and the use of social media, we can educate the public on the one hand and keep the pressure on companies and governments on the other.’
The oldest campaign still running is Beat the Microbead against microplastics in cosmetics. Ocean Clean Wash is about microfiber pollution from synthetic clothing. Millions of washing machines release billions of plastic fibers into the environment every day. The Plastic Health Coalition was formed to research harmful health effects on humans. Much attention was paid to education, such as developing teaching materials, giving guest lectures in schools, and releasing the Plastic Soup Atlas of the World.
There are also clean-up campaigns (World Cleanup Day, Clean Rivers, Trash Hunters) in which the brands from which the litter originates are identified so that the producers can be called to account.
GROWING ORGANIZATION
Maria Westerbos, still director of the PSF, built her organization step by step. Friends helped her, and volunteers signed up. After years, the first modest salaries could be paid. Cooperation with involved companies, the Business Angels, was continually expanded and collaboration with other NGOs, nationally and internationally increased. Maria provided a Supervisory Board chaired by former minister Jacqueline Cramer. A year ago, PSF moved into a new office in Amsterdam.
PSF cooperates with every organization that supports our mission, does not mince words, and welcomes everyone in the fight against plastic pollution. We will remain desperately in need of this for the next ten years because, despite all the attention, the plastic soup is increasing, not decreasing.
There is indeed no time to lose.
Photo: Maria Westerbos and Pieter van Maaren, Mayor of Zaltbommel, at the starting signal of World Cleanup Day in 2019.
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