Final Straw Foundation

We are a registered charity in England and Wales (no. 1191500) working with local communities and businesses to highlight and tackle the impact of pollution on our marine environment, with a particular focus on plastic pollution. We started in Emsworth, Hampshire in 2018 as a group of volunteers giving our time to help clean up our local community spaces and, in time, the surrounding areas. We originally focussed on encouraging businesses to cut back on the amount of disposable, pointless plastic that is used and that we were seeing so often washed up on our local beaches. We ran beach cleans and started talking to the local communities in the Solent area and grew from there. We started out as the Final Straw Emsworth, then needed to grow because we had so much interest in the campaign from further afield and so became the Final Straw Solent. We were a non-profit Community Interest Company (CIC) from June 2018 through to September 2020, at which point we gained our charity status and became the Final Straw Foundation CIO. Now, we approach the issue of plastic pollution from three main angles: Community, Education and Businesses. We still run regular public beach cleaning events to engage communities with their local environment, to see the issue ‘on the ground’ and to mobilise volunteers. Not only is this a great way to get back in touch with nature, with benefits that include the obvious clear-up of litter, but also meeting like-minded people and getting some often well-needed head space and connection with nature. We work with community groups, for example the U3A, WI, Scouts and Guides, giving talks and running activities and encouraging people to avoid single-use plastic and how to best dispose of it if they do need to use it. We create interesting and innovative projects to raise awareness of the issues surrounding pollution in our local harbours and wider seas, including art projects and online campaigns. We highlight what we CAN do to help, rather than simply pointing out all the problems. We offer solutions and advice to businesses on the simple steps they can all take to combat the scourge of plastic pollution that enters our precious marine environment. Corporate beach cleans remain popular and we enjoy meeting volunteer from all walks of corporate life on these events, often resulting in regular volunteering by the staff that attend. Our plastic-free accreditation scheme for marine organisations has several sailing clubs and centres achieving the Gold level and more working towards it. We have a very busy educational outreach programme and have reached thousands of children in the Solent area through assemblies, workshops, EcoClubs, beach school sessions and Eco-Conferences. We believe we are stronger together and enjoy collaborating with other NGOs, local government and other organisations to tackle the problem of plastic pollution in our environment. We anticipate that our plans for the next three years will grow the charity further and reinforce the work that we have achieved to date.