Take 3 for the Environment
As part of our company’s efforts to improve the health of the environment and reduce our impact on it wherever we can, we recently completed a pro-bono project for Take 3, an Australian non-profit organisation that promotes healthy and clean oceans and waterways.
The idea of Take 3 is a simple one: every time you visit a beach or river (or anywhere else for that matter!) you take three pieces of rubbish away with you when you leave (#Take3ForTheSea). This waste should be recycled (if possible) or disposed of correctly.
Take 3 are aiming to lead people in a movement to remove plastic pollution from the environment and prevent waste. They believe that no matter where you are you can take action and create positive change.
We worked with Take 3 to develop their Home Plastic Footprint Snapshot Survey to better understand how much single-use plastic people use and discard each day. The survey is open to anyone who wants to learn more about the environment, the negative impacts of single-use plastic, or to gain a greater understanding of how much plastic they use as part of their life.
Single-use plastics, which are used only once and then discarded, are the most common type of plastic in today’s society. They kill animals (have you ever seen a photo of a turtle with a straw lodged in its nose?), take hundreds of years to break down and are starting to impact human health as they split up into microplastics and enter our food chain.
A 2018 report entitled The New Plastics Economy: Rethinking the Future of Plastics produced by the World Economic Forum and the Ellen MacArthur Foundation estimates that the world’s oceans will contain more plastic than fish by 2050. The best research currently available estimates that there are over 150 million tonnes of plastics in our oceans.
Our work supporting Take 3 aligns with various international campaigns to promote increased environmental sustainability. These include the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), in particular Goals 12 (Responsible Consumption and Production), 13 (Climate Action) and 14 (Life Below Water); Plastic Free July, a global movement that encourages people to refuse single-use plastics; and Plastic Bag Free Day, another global initiative celebrated on 3 July each year that aims to eliminate the use of single-use plastic bags in the world.
We encourage people to take the survey to better understand how and why single-use plastics are used across Australia, and encourage everyone to consider environmentally-friendly alternatives to single-use plastics which they use in their lives.
If you’re interested in learning more about any of the issues discussed above, please get in touch with us via Ken or Jasper or phone (02) 9373 9904. We’re always interested in discussing how we could partner with others to conduct further research and evaluation to help achieve the SDGs.
