Few clean-up initiatives capture the global public imagination or continue to grow in popularity as the decades pass. But the International Coastal Cleanup has done exactly that: it now operates in more than 100 countries, with 800,000 people collecting 20 million pieces of trash in 2017 from beaches and waterways around the world.
Janis Jones is CEO of Ocean Conservancy, the charity that coordinates the cleanup. It was set up in 1986 by green pioneers Linda Maraniss and Kathy O’Hara, who asked volunteers to log the waste collected from the beginning. This data continues to be captured, now through a mobile application, and used to think of ways to eliminate waste in the future.
Jones is a trained environmental lawyer, who has spent the past two decades defending the people and places in the Arctic, working with Ocean Conservancy in Alaska to challenge threats from oil and gas development, climate change and increases in shipping. She is a champion of ecosystem-based management for the oceans and an expert on marine conservation and coastal law.
The International Coastal Cleanup is backed by charities including The Coca-Cola Foundation and The Starbucks Foundation, with backing from major companies including Bank of America and American Express.
Tags: Climate crisis, Ocean Conservancy, plastic pollution
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