, , - Posted on September 25, 2019

Photo Essay: PlastiCo. Project celebrates World Cleanup Day in Ecuador with brand audits

We are PlastiCo. Project from Ecuador! To celebrate the World Cleanup Day this year we activated 15 cleanup sites in four different cities. We had the participation of nearly 600 volunteers that joined this beautiful activity.

Andrea Lema
PlastiCo members and participants for the #BrandAudit2019 during the World Cleanup Day pose in front of their collected sacks of trash

This year we collected more than 1700 kg of trash in places that seemed clean at first sight. Volunteers couldn't help but wonder about the impact of single-use plastic while they were sorting the trash.

For a few hours that we all turned into scientists, we observed in the trash we found how plastic works, how it never really goes away and how it only breaks up into little pieces of plastic that then turn into a huge problem called microplastics.

Also, this World Cleanup Day marks a year since we started doing brand audits in our cleanups. It has been a year of learning a lot about producer responsibility and their involvement in the plastic pollution issue. We feel so excited about doing this in every cleanup since this information is a powerful tool to initiate a conversation with big corporations about possible solutions.

Overall we celebrated this special day by learning, acting, questioning, and connecting with the green community committed to having a positive impact on the planet.

Andrea is an economist, environmentalist, and activist for the rights of nature. From a young age, she has felt passionate about nature, and 3 years ago she started to take action against plastic pollution by creating PlastiCo. Project. She lives a zero-waste lifestyle and started a zero-waste store in Quito for people to learn about new sustainable lifestyle alternatives.

© 2023 Break Free From Plastic. All right reserved.