“The Young Champions of the Earth Prize has been critical to help us expand our international influence … When we got the award, we were one of the very few Chinese organizations focused on marine ecosystem issues. Over the last two years, we have seen a trend: more people are focusing on these issues owing to our recognition through the prize and UNEP’s #CleanSeas campaign, urging government and civil society to focus more on marine plastic issues. It was great timing for us" -- Miao Wang.

In 2018, Chinese diver Miao Wang was named a UNEP Young Champion of the Earth for founding Better Blue, a global network that aims to redefine the diving industry and empower every diver and diving centre to become advocates for marine conservation. To do this, Better Blue is involved in citizen science, marine public education, industry development support and the protection of endangered species and their habitats. It trains people within diving communities and holds events to raise awareness about conservation. Today, Better Blue is one of China’s top ranking marine non-governmental organizations as measured by its fundraising efforts, offline activities and exposure. It has 14 city communities, nine cooperated diving centres and six university associations. It has cooperated with marathons and organized exhibitions and ocean talks to bring marine conservation to larger audiences offline. Wang says she aims to empower diving communities to contribute to finding and implementing solutions to marine pollution and other threats like ocean warming and acidification.

"We need to take the Phoenician approach to innovation. Humanity has benefitted hugely from the invention of plastic—from transportation to the health sector. However, the plastic pollution problem is now out of control. Single-use, unnecessary plastics can be found everywhere, and our consumption of it is not slowing down. We need innovative substitutes to plastic, and the courage for individuals, the private sector and governments to prioritize the phasing out of disposable plastics.” UNEP’s Head of Advocacy, Atif Butt.  

British adventurer and Phoenician enthusiast Philip Beale sailed his replica of a Phoenician ship from Tunisia to the United States in 2019 to raise awareness about plastic pollution and collect data about the extent of the problem. Beale, film producer Yuri Sanada and a crew of about 10 people set off on the 6,000-mile voyage in The Phoenicia in September. The 20-metre-long replica trawled through the ocean, collecting microplastics, as it travelled from Carthage, Tunisia through to Cadiz (Spain), Essaouira (Morocco), Tenerife (Canary Islands) and Santo Domingo (Dominican Republic) before finally arriving in Fort Lauderdale, Florida on 4 February 2020.

"Globally, only 9 per cent of plastics produced are actually recycled. That’s because as a society, we lack recycling technologies that can make virgin-quality products from plastic waste. My project is a social impact startup, developing and scaling up a new technology to recycle unrecyclable plastics." Miranda Wang.

Canadian biologist, engineer and innovator Miranda Wang won UNEP’s Young Champions of the Earth prize in 2018 for her work to develop a new technique to recycle plastic. In 2017, she co-invented a novel chemical recycling process with Jeanny Yao and since then she has co-founded BioCellection Inc to scale up the process, working with city governments, waste management companies and material manufacturers. California-based Biocellection’s technology breaks down plastics into chemical building blocks, upcycling them into higher value materials for manufacturing. The aim is to reduce the amount of plastics sent to oceans and landfills. Wang is BioCellection’s CEO. The company has already completed two thirds of a pilot programme to test the technology at scale with the City of San José, California, and other tests have already been completed, with Google among others.

"Although there were so many obstacles along the way, this run has taught me so much about the plastic industry in this country and the lack of awareness, education and action going on when it comes to plastic." Sam Bencheghib

In July 2019, Sam Bencheghib, 22, embarked upon an epic run of around 3,000 miles from New York to Los Angeles to raise awareness about ocean pollution and the Clean Seas campaign. His Ocean2Ocean run took him across 13 states, averaging 20 miles a day for six months. He finished in February 2020 by jumping into the Pacific Ocean. Bencheghib, who grew up in Bali and founded a youth-led environmental organization to clean the coastlines with his brothers there, wanted to highlight the challenges that Americans face in reducing their plastic footprint and to instigate action. His organization is now called Make a Change World. Bencheghib wore shoes made from upcycled plastic trash and bought only items with zero-waste packaging along his way. He also collected plastic trash as he ran, keeping it with him until he found somewhere to recycle it. Along the way, he visited universities, schools, recycling facilities, environmental activists and governments, meeting more than 9,000 people.

"Plastic is such a tangible thing. It is visible, you use it every day, you see it, and you can witness the sheer volume of its destruction to the environment. This is not something you can deny … As such the pathways to stopping the destruction are much clearer - not easier, but clearer. You either ban it where it is unnecessary or change it to compostable material. This simplicity gives me hope and, at the very least, it gives me a clear vision of what to fight for." Tiza Mafira.

For years, lawyer Tiza Mafira has been at the forefront of moves to ban single-use plastic bags in her native Indonesia, the second-largest contributor to marine plastic pollution after China. Mafira is director of the Indonesia Plastic Bag Diet Movement, which in 2015 launched a petition asking retailers to no longer give out plastic bags for free. The following year, a nationwide trial of a plastic bag charge was introduced. After six months, there had been a 55 per cent reduction in the use of plastic bags. Several provinces began to prepare their own regulations and two cities in Indonesia have banned plastic bags in modern retail stores. Since then, there has been more progress. In January 2020, authorities in the capital Jakarta said they would ban single-use plastic bags from street markets and shopping malls from the middle of the year. The new regulation says retailers should provide environmentally-friendly carrier bags and the penalties for violations will range from written warnings, to fines of anywhere between US$360 and US$1,800, and finally suspension or termination of trading permits. Mafira also campaigns for the creation of zero-waste cities, where every single piece of trash biodegrades in nature or circles back to become a raw material for production.

"Although there were so many obstacles along the way, this run has taught me so much about the plastic industry in this country and the lack of awareness, education and action going on when it comes to plastic." Sam Bencheghib

"What we have to ban is what is in our heads and hearts: our empathy towards plastic, our disconnect with nature, our disconnect towards the ocean. There are plenty of laws, policies and regulations, which govern the use and misuse of plastic, but we have to ask, is this law or policy going to change people’s hearts and minds?" Afroz Shah.

Indian lawyer Afroz Shah became the face of the world’s largest beach cleanup after he decided in 2015 that something had to be done to tackle the mounds of plastic trash covering Mumbai’s Versova beach. He had moved into an apartment overlooking the beach and was horrified by the waste littering the shoreline. With his neighbour, he started picking up the trash but soon his personal mission was attracting dozens of volunteers every weekend to join what Shah called his weekend “dates with the ocean”. Shah and the volunteers collected millions of kilograms of waste and the months of backbreaking work paid off: in March 2018, volunteers spotted around 80 olive ridley turtle hatchlings heading towards the sea. The vulnerable turtles had not been seen on the beach for decades. Over the years, Shah, who was recognized with a UNEP Champions of the Earth award in 2016, has been joined on the beach by slum-dwellers, Bollywood stars, foreign diplomats and politicians. To this day, he and his volunteers clean beaches and mangrove swamps and visit schools to educate children about what they do. Shah also works among the 50,000-strong population of two beach-side settlements -- what he calls human-ocean conflict zones -- to educate residents about the devastating effects of plastic litter and turn them into zero-waste communities.

"It's almost as if we have taken out all the fish in the ocean and replaced them with plastics. We need to get these two issues under control very quickly: eliminate the use of avoidable single-use plastics and stop overfishing because if we don't do that our children and our grandchildren will not have a sustainable future and it will devastate all the incredible wildlife in our oceans, which it is currently doing." Lewis Pugh.  

Endurance swimmer and UNEP Patron of the Oceans, Lewis Pugh has put his life on the line time and again to raise awareness of the need to protect our seas. He was the first person to complete a long-distance swim in every ocean in the world and has also swum across a glacial lake on Mount Everest to draw attention to the melting of the glaciers. In August 2018, Pugh completed an epic swim along the length of the English Channel to raise awareness of the need to do more to protect our oceans from threats such as plastic pollution, overfishing and climate change. He was the first person to complete this feat in just Speedos, goggles and a cap. He undertook the brutal swim to drive home the message that governments need to commit to fully protect at least 30 per cent of the world’s oceans by 2030. In January 2020, Pugh swam one kilometre under a melting ice sheet in East Antarctica, the coldest place on earth, to demonstrate the rapid pace of climate change and advocate for the creation of a marine protected area in the region.