How small ripples can create big waves

Learn how in Plastic Free July, your individual actions can contribute to a wider global movement

It’s sometimes hard to imagine how our personal small actions can make a difference. It might feel like the changes you are making are a drop-in the ocean against the tide of throwaway plastic in our communities.

Grassroots activism is powerful. Drops become ripples, ripples become waves, and with over 68 mllion of us in UK, it becomes a new tide of people working together to free where they live from single-use plastic. We can all contribute, at home, in our work places and businesses, our schools and community spaces. We can all be part of the plastic free movement.

Individual Action

As well as those simple, small plastic free swaps such as re-fillable water bottles and coffee cups, there are more ways you can get involved:

1. Get an Action Plan

Sign up to receive an individual action plan and start your plastic free journey

2. Do a Million Mile Clean

Anyone can join or register a Million Mile clean, even if just on your way to school, work or on a dog walk. Tell us about the brands you see and help us tackle single-use plastic in our beaches, rivers, streets and green spaces, right back to the companies that produce it.

3. Join your Local Plastic Free Community

There are over 900 Plastic Free Communities in the UK, and they are always looking for people to get involved. We found that people involved with their local SAS movement not only felt they were reducing plastic in their lives and community, they also felt more connected to people around them and spent more time outdoors & connected to nature.

4. Sign up your community to be part of the solution

If you’re not already living in a Plastic Free Community, find out more about what being Community Lead is all about.

Local Level Action

Our communities are driving plastic free reduction by working with community groups, businesses, and councils, creating a nationwide movement.

Scale really matters, and it doesn’t take a massive reduction in plastic use at a local level to see huge impact on the ground nationally. Take our Plastic Free Business Champions as an example: if one business removed three items of plastic, which meant a monthly plastic reduction of 50 items, that’s 600 a year, and multiplied by the number of plastic free champions in the UK, that’s 3.3 MILLION!

We know that our Plastic Free Champions are removing much, much more than that though. Conservative estimates in our Impact Report reckon 43.3 million items a year. That’s just based on 461 respondents to our survey, and we have over 5,500 champions reducing plastics across the UK.

Scale this to all of the community groups and individuals engaged with, the plastic reductions numbers become EPIC. It creates a network of communities, all saying no to avoidable single-use plastics, and driving the demand for alternatives.

The Global Movement

But what’s the point of individual action and community action when plastic pollution is a global problem. 8 million metric tonnes of plastic enters the ocean every year globally. Manufacturers across the world are pumping out increasing numbers of single use plastic items each year. How can you and I and our local community possibly make a difference?

A global problem needs a global solution. In June, negotiators from over 145 countries met in Paris to start discussing the details of a brand-new Global Plastics Treaty, to end plastic pollution.

At the end of last year we launched our End Plastic Pollution Report, which is a roadmap for the UK government to adopt as its contribution to the treaty. And all our actions … and yours on the ground … contribute to it. Whether it’s signing up for a plan, taking part in a Brand Audit, signing a petition or gathering information at a Mass Unwrap.

By being part of Plastic Free Communities, Surfers Against Sewage uses your voice to push for policy change, by connecting grassroots community action with policy makers as we demand an end to plastic pollution on UK beaches by 2030.

We can make sure we kick our addiction to avoidable single-use plastic, and change the system that produces it. But we can only do all of this together. That’s why we’re proud of our Plastic Free Communities network and all they do.

It starts here and it starts with us. And if you’re still reading this, that means you too!

Find out more about our plastic pollution campaigns here

Join the Plastic Free Communities movement here