Plastic Oceans team completes mission to Santiago, Chile

What an amazing week we just had for our efforts at the Plastic Oceans Foundation – both north and south of the equator.

While our US Chairman, William Pfeiffer, was representing us in Davos, I was joined in Chile by Chief Evangelist, Craig Leeson, and our Director of Partnerships, Brigette Allen. Hosting and coordinating our journey was Mark Minneboo, Executive Director of Plastic Oceans Chile.

With an incredible film crew in tow, we set out to discover and capture examples of multi-sector solutions to plastic pollution. As a nation with over 2,600 miles of coastline, Chile has a vested interest in tackling this issue head-on. We were impressed by the efforts we found to bring together industry leaders, government, NGOs, and local communities, to innovate and act on efforts to reduce the plastic waste that is destroying the oceans and our own human food chain.

We were thrilled to film incredible solutions from Comberplast, a company focused on promoting the circular economy through plastic innovation; the Mingako Foundation, a local community working together to raise awareness of sustainability and the need to rethink plastic; and the Chilean Minister of the Environment, Marcelo Mena, who was inspired by the film to push for a plastic bag ban starting on the coastal areas later this year.

Thanks to the amazing support of Maximiliano Luksic, we had Canal13/Teletrece, a TV channel that broadcasts across Latin America, shadow our filming and providing live coverage of the Plastic Oceans Rethink Plastic Conference – which had over 100,000 views online!

We would like to thank the Canadian Embassy in Chile for their support of the conference and for the direct participation of Canada’s Ambassador to Chile, Patricia Peña.

Stay tuned for exciting video clips capturing this inspirational visit experience in Chile.

With the launch of our regional office in Santiago, with Mark Minneboo as its Executive Director and his incredible team focused on education and research, we are certain to see Chile take a huge leadership role in the Plastic Oceans Global Movement.

Please enjoy these two video clips from Mark and Craig, summarizing our activities.