Global plastic cleanup

The A Rocha family is committed to seeing our oceans be a place of hope, not plastic. We began our project on marine plastic pollution in 2015 based out of our field study centres in France. This led to an expansion of the work globally including developing resources for our Plastics Toolbox.

We not only study and provide education about plastic pollution, but are contributing to habitat restoration of coastal, lake and riverine systems. A major way we are doing this is through cleanup projects.The global A Rocha family works throughout the year on this issue, but are focusing efforts to join in the International Coastal Cleanup events held September each year. In 2017 A Rocha cleanups took place in Kenya, South Africa, New Zealand, Netherlands, Portugal and the USA. In 2018 eight countries in the A Rocha family held clean up events or participated in events organized by others locally – emphasising our commitment to partnerships. In 2019 this increased to 13 country programmes. The year 2020 was strange for all, but we still managed to do cleanups on four continents! Our team in the Netherlands had 20 different cleanups along their coasts! We also worked in Australia, South Africa, Kenya, Portugal, France and the United States. An exciting addition was our partner in Madagascar Natiora Ahy joining with us this year. We hope to be out in 2021 to keep contributing to reducing plastic pollution.

A beach clean-up guide is available to help those who want to organize their own events. This guide is also available in French, Portuguese (Brazilian), Portuguese (European) and Spanish. We also encourage A Rocha National Organizations to find a beach cleanup near them using the International Coastal Cleanup website and join their neighbours in this God-honouring and community-serving activity.

If you don’t live by the seaside, clean up a river, lake, street, park or vacant lot in your town and keep that litter from ever getting into the ocean.

We are recommending that national organizations and individuals not only collect plastic off beaches, but contribute to efforts to document the nature of it. This involves considerably more effort, so do not feel obligated. But if you are able, it will help A Rocha begin to quantify its contribution to the global effort as well as help researchers to better understand the issue. We recommend using the methodology suggested at the International Coastal Cleanup site by The Ocean Conservancy. Download the Clean Swell app and document the trash you collect – this can be used any time of the year if you regularly clean plastic.

The act of cleaning the beach is an end in and of itself – we are caring for God’s beaches, ocean and waterways. However, there were a number of additional benefits from this activity that have been identified out our global efforts to be involved in the ICC.

• This is a great event to invite new people to, Christian or otherwise.
• There is significant publicity that can be attached to these events, both traditional media and social media. We use these hashtags: #ARochaMarine #SDG14
• It can be combined with citizen science research on nurdles.
• While billed as the “coastal” cleanup, there was involvement in rivers far inland particularly by South Africa and in Portugal in the past. This event can easily be extended to rivers and lakes.
• Theology resources in the Plastics Toolbox were used to start events with prayer or to read the meditation during/ These provided a great way to connect the event to our faith.

A Rocha South Africa river cleanup in 2017