Waitrose & Partners has revealed the projects it will be supporting with its unique £1 million grant fund designed to tackle plastic pollution.
Plan Plastic – The Million Pound Challenge will award money, over one year, to projects that can demonstrate an impact to reduce plastic.
Working with environmental charity Hubbub, the fund attracted 150 applications, and five organisations have now been selected to receive a share of the £1 million fund.
The diverse group of winners, from marine scientists to pioneering charities, all demonstrated innovation in tackling plastic pollution.
The first company to win the grant in Blue Marine Foundation, which has developed a pioneering initiative called SAFEGEAR that aims to stop ghost fishing gear at source by attaching beacons to buoys to make fishing gear visible.
Onion Collective and Biohm are another winner, and are working together to create a new plastic biorecycling facility in Somerset that will use mycelium to break down synthetic plastic waste and turn it into new products.
The final three winners are the Women’s Environmental Network, a campaign which is aim to start a UK-wide revolution around eco-friendly menstrual products, Plymouth Marina Laboratory, with a project whereby beds or rafts of mussels ae deployed in estuaries and coastal sites to filter out microplastics from the water, and YHA, a charity that will see water bottle refill stations installed in 60 major youth hostels across England and Wales, eradicating the use of single use plastic bottles.
The £1 million fund has been raised from the sale of 5p carrier bags, prior to the retailer recently removing them from its shops.
Tor Harris, Head of CSR, Health and Agriculture at Waitrose & Partners, said: “It’s important for us to tackle unnecessary plastic both in our shops but also in the wider world.”
“All these inspirational projects have the ability to create real impact in tackling environmental issues and encouraging behaviour change so we can collectively achieve our goal of reducing plastic pollution.”