Plastic Soup Foundation
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    CAMPAIGNS AND PROJECTS IN THE BATTLE AGAINST THE PLASTIC TSUNAMI

    Do you want to know what the Plastic Soup Foundation is doing? What activities we campaign on and what we want to achieve? The battle against plastic pollution is a very long one, but looking back at 2022, we can note a lot of successes.

    • Plastic Fashion
    • Deposit system at stations
    • Book launch: Dit was de Plastictijd
    • World Cleanup Day
    • Farm Animals
    • Beat the Microbeat
    • Nurdles

    What else do we do:

    • Education
    • Apps
    • Plastic Health Summit
    • Plastic diet

    Plastic Fashion

    Plastic Fashion is our campaign to breathe new life into the problem of synthetic clothing fibres.

    • We published the Do Clothes Make Us Sick? Fashion, Fibres and Human Healthreport on 1 November.
    • A survey that we ran showed that 74% of people in the Netherlands are angry about the bad quality of fast fashion clothing.
    • The campaign got a lot of publicity including news broadcasters such as RTL Nieuws, NOS Radio1, and Radar Online, and from national newspapers.
    • At the end of November, the D66 political party, with our input, wrote the ‘Initiatiefnota kleding’ (initiative bill on clothing, in Dutch).
    Support us in the fight against plastic fashion

    Deposit system at stations

    We have worked closely with other organisations for years on a deposit system for bottles and cans. And we have been successful! Plastic bottles have had a deposit system since 2021 and cans will follow in April 2023. It is wonderful that NS, the Dutch railway, will install deposit machines at fifty large stations in the Netherlands and has already started in Utrecht and The Hague. And … with one press of the button, users can donate the deposit money to us.

    Boeklancering Dit was de Plastic tijd

    Book launch: Dit was de Plastictijd

    We launched a children’s book called ‘Dit was de plastictijd’ (this was the era of plastic) and a brand new children’s website in October (both in Dutch). The newspaper ‘Het Parool’ called the children’s book ‘the most unexpected title of this year’s Children’s Book Week’ and at the Buchmesse book fair in Frankfurt, there was immediate interest in having the book available in different languages.

    Check out the book: ‘This was the Plastictime’

    World Cleanup Day

    We organise the ‘World Cleanup Day’ every year in the Netherlands.

    • In 2021, the Netherlands exported almost 70 million kg of plastic waste to Indonesia. This was revealed in our ‘Een neokoloniaal plasticschandaal’ (a neocolonial plastics scandal, in Dutch) report. The news was explosive. It led to the VVD and GroenLinks political parties asking Parliamentary Questions.
    • The people who participated in World Cleanup Day collected EUR 10,000 for Nina’s campaign in Indonesia.
    Support us in the fight against plastic pollution

    Farm Animals

    Farm Animals is the name under which the research that we are funding at the Free University of Amsterdam into microplastics in the feed, meat, blood and milk of farm animals is being done.

    • This news was brought to prominence by all the mainstream media on 8 July 2022. The Party for the Animals political party asked Parliamentary Questions in connection with this research.
    • More than 1,500 people signed the petition in which we called on the Minister of Agriculture for better controls.
    Support this project

    Beat the Microbead

    In the Beat the Microbead campaign we urge producers to remove plastics and microplastics from their products and ask consumers to stop using products containing microplastics.

    • We published a report entitled ‘Plastic: The Hidden Beauty Ingredient’. It showed that 9 of the 10 … It was picked up widely and reports appeared on Dutch news and current affairs programmes such as Nieuwsuur, NOS-Journaal and NOS Stories, in national newspapers such as the AD and the Telegraaf, and international newspapers such as The Times and The Independent.
    • 2,642 people requested their favourite brands of cosmetics to remove all plastics from their products.
    • More than 50,000 people signed a petition asking the EU to ban microplastics in cosmetics.
    • At the end of September the European Commission published a proposal to ban microplastics in cosmetics, and in December a motion was passed to push for ambitious legislation in the European context.
    SUPPORT OUR FIGHT AGAINST MICROBEADS

    Nurdles

    Nurdles are tiny plastic granules of which in the EU alone, 23 billion end up in the environment every day. The Plastic Soup Foundation has been fighting this type of plastic pollution for years. Read all about it in the Nurdle dossier

    • On 3 March 2022 we made the research of a whistle-blower public. It led to the VVD and GroenLinks political parties asking Parliamentary Questions. Two motions were submitted by D66 and the Party of the Animals parties. Both were accepted.
    Support us

    What else do we do?

    Education

    Education has been at the heart of our organisation right from the start. We reach more than 180,000 pupils in the Netherlands and Belgium with our free lesson materials.

    Help us reach more kids

    Apps

    Our two successful apps are Beat the Microbead and My Little Plastic Footprint.

    • The Beat the Microbead app can be used to scan the ingredients of cosmetics packaging to check if the product contains microplastics.
    • My Little Plastic Footprint is an app that helps you reduce your plastic consumption by following a plastic diet.
    Help ons de apps te verbeteren

    Plastic Health Summit

    Our Plastic Health Summit is the congress about the relationship between plastic and health. It is the event where scientists from all over the world gather to present the latest research on this area.

    The third Summit will be held on 11 May 2023 in Brussels to meet the needs of European policymakers.

    Help us get this event off the ground

    Plastic diet

    We try to motivate as many people as we can to choose plastic free through plastic diet activities such as Goede voornemens (good resolutions) and Do the Plastic Switch. We also help companies do a plastic diet.

    SUPPORT US IN THIS KIND OF PROJECT

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