2024 was a brilliant year for us! We have made incredible progress on our mission to clean up our oceans and coastlines and we couldn’t have done it without our amazing volunteers and supporters. 

The year started as it meant to go on – our annual Eastney beach clean with our Youth Ambassador, Billie. This was the first of 27 public beach cleans that we hosted in 2024, with 1,468 incredible people giving their time for their planet. We also had another 314 people join us from 19 inspirational businesses, using their volunteer hours to clean up our coastlines. In total, this combined effort removed a phenomenal 2,582 Kgs of litter from our beaches and wider environment. We are so proud and thankful to everyone who contributed to this massive achievement. 

Our education outreach team has been working extremely hard in 2024, with awesome results. 13,512 children have been given valuable lessons on the importance of environmental stewardship, positive sustainable action, and ecological innovation through our workshops, plastic free day, assemblies and wild beach schools. 2024 has also seen the introduction of our brand new Education Station. The station addresses the plastic problem from multiple angles, focusing on the importance of a circular economy. Fitted with machinery to shred, melt and mold plastic waste into new, useful, items, it is an invaluable tool in teaching about the impact of the plastics industry and how plastics should be considered as a precious resource. We are so excited to showcase this exciting new venture to a wider audience in 2025. 

We are very lucky to have welcomed lots of new volunteers this year, in particular to our Borrow Bag project. Over 300 Kgs of fabric have been diverted from landfill and put to good use by 398 fantastic volunteers. It was great to see so many people coming together at our workshops to sew and socialise, all whilst helping to remove up to 130,000 plastic bags from circulation. We have also had hardworking and talented volunteers help us with public engagement events, blogs, wild beach schools and numerous other vital jobs, for which we are so grateful. 

So, what’s on the agenda for 2025 here at Final Straw Foundation? We are very excited to carry on our work with schools, businesses and communities this year. We also have some exciting new projects on the horizon. One of these is our new accreditation scheme. We have previously offered a free accreditation to marine businesses who were looking to reduce their reliance on single use plastics. We are thrilled to be working on a brand new accreditation scheme, open to all types of businesses that are looking to boost their sustainability, which will be launching in 2025. 

We would like to say a massive thank you again to everyone who has supported us in 2024, we could not do it without you! We can’t wait to see what 2025 will bring.