Project Dates: 01.06.24 to 01.06.25

The second year of a project generously enabled by Depeche Mode and Hublot’s Memento Mori Tour charity partnership with the Conservation Collective to tackle plastic pollution.

DEF’s portion of the funding received is being used to support one of our flagship grantees, Till the Coast is Clear, to scale up their vital work recovering plastic pollution from hard-to-reach locations on the South Devon coast.

Since the first round of funding, 20,000+ kgs of marine plastic has been reclaimed from Devon’s coastlines, with an estimated 70% stemming from commercial fishing and shipping gear. They also purchased additional kayaks made from recycled marine plastic to take bigger groups of volunters on clean-up missions, set up new remote waste collection points, hired a new team member, and equipped several local schools with beach cleaning kits.

This second tranche of funding will be used to:

• add more remote coastal plastic waste collection points for pollution cleaned up by the general public
• distribute coast clean up equipment to more local groups
• develop the Circular Adventures initiative
• recruit new volunteers across all TTCIC’s environmental initiatives
• and progress with the conversion of the vintage wooden motor cruiser, Dolphin, into a community-owned electric vessel to provide nature immersion experiences on the Kingsbridge Salcombe estuary nature reserve.

 

Read about year one of the funding HERE.

 

IMPACT SUMMARY

See mini impact update from year one HERE.

IMPACT SUMMARY August 2025

Project Activities:

• The network of signed cobranded ocean plastic pick up points around the South Devon coast have proven very successful both in terms of awareness raising and encouraging public participation in tackling the problem.
• The project is linked to several food businesses and seek to positively influence their menu choices, supply chain decisions, to maximise the often under utilised communication and educational opportunities they have with customers regarding food production and its impacts.
• Helped recover fishing net and some rope from Salcombe harbour which would otherwise be landfilled.
• The project is supporting other organisations in working with a local fishing port to help encourage plastic pollution recovery as part of their everyday operations, and to help divert end of life plastic gear and equipment from land fill into existing resource recovery schemes.

 

Project Impact:

• Helping native birds, fish and other marine life to thrive by removing plastic pollution from their home.
• Encouraging people to have a greater appreciation of the natural world and its value, through volunteering. The project has been very successful in this respect but it is very much an on going process and it takes time for long term behaviour change to become embedded. Every experience of working outside surrounded by nature is a valuable one and there is no doubt that it has a positive impact on the vast majority of participants even if it is not immediately perceived that way or obvious at the time.
• Due to enabling more plastic to be recovered and recycled and therefore reducing the production of virgin plastic from fossil fuels.