Unplastify

We started Unplastify only 2 years ago, with no investment but our time and effort and we’ve had many positive outcomes and are a sustainable company. We grew up into being a team of 12 while systematizing processes and services. Now we need to act fast, in order to grow further, to scale up our solutions regionally and have greater impact. Solve Mit can be a key partner to do this.

Our project, as a whole, has a focus on Latin America, but we also aim to have a global reach. We believe the winning this prize will help us to grow regionally and expand globally: 

1.TEAM / STRUCTURE:

- We need to consolidate our headquarters team and establish local teams in each of the countries we operate. We will develop regional alliances with local organizations to support our education program, work with local offices of our company clients and lead change in plastic regulation policies.

As a result of this changes in the next 3 years we aim:

- Work to unplastify +15 regional latinamerican organizations per year

- Reach a network of +200 schools with our Unplastify Challenge

- Support plastic regulation policies in +5 countries in LatinAmerica

We started exploring the plastic problem first-hand in the most remote places on Earth, the middle of the ocean. In 2018 co-founder Agustina Besada crossed the Atlantic Ocean (twice) aboard a 36-feet sailboat, taking samples of plastic pollution and interviewing experts along the way to learn more about the problem and possible solutions. 

Throughout this adventure we learned three key things:

•  The problem is not the material, is its use and abuse.
• Recycling is not the solution, prevention is the key.
• To face this global problem we need to act locally. 

Building on this voyage, we decided to transform the adventure into action and we created Unplastify, a social enterprise based in Latin America committed to accelerate solutions to reduce plastic pollution and change the human relationship with plastic. 

We believe we need systemic change to avoid single use plastic.  For this change to happen we  need to intervene on 3 fronts:  Behavior (cultural campaigns), Operations (product and services), and Norms (internal or public).

We accelerate systemic and collaborative processes that empower individuals to be unplastifying leaders in their communities, organizations, and companies.

The problem of plastic pollution is alarming. Plastic production is growing exponentially and if we continue with this level of production, by 2050 there will be more plastics than fish in the oceans (The New Plastics Economy, 2016). Unfortunately, waste management systems are ineffective: only 9% of the plastic discarded gets recycled, and it is estimated that approximately 8 million metric tons of plastic enter the ocean each year (Jambeck, 2018).

Plastic waste is affecting the health of the oceans, animals and people. Latin America and the Caribbean is been seriously affected by these problem.

At Unplastify, we believe that the problem of plastic pollution is not the material, is its use and abuse. We believe that we can’t rely on recycling, because systemic prevention is the key. We believe we need to unplastify the world by changing the human relationship with plastic.
We need to redesign products, servicies and our culture in order to avoid single use plastic. 

For that we have developed programs call “Unplastify Challenges” that guide different stakeholders (organization, companies and government) into the systemic unplastifying process

Our strategy combines: exploration, education and action.  Exploration seeks connecting emotionally with the problem. Education is key to provide information and better understanding of the problem from a scientific perspective. Action facilitates systemic changes of products/services and supports students who want to start unplastifying their schools.

Our approach: Unplastifying process, the progressive action of minimizing the use of single-use-plastics systemically changing three things:

• Operations (products and services)
• Culture (information and habits) 
• Policies (internal or public)

Our solution: is focused on ACTION and on SYSTEMIC CHANGE. Others focus on awareness, on changing habits at a personal level, or on advocacy to push regulation or demanding solutions from companies. 

We base our solution in a series of principles that we believe key to achieve our mission and differentiates ours from other approaches: 

• inspiration - we choose a positive message as the most effective driver for action 
• empowerment - every person can be a change-maker within their own community or organization 
• responsibility - now that we know about the problem, we are responsible to act 
•  prevention - to avoid plastic is more efficient than managing it 
• action - the key is to provide the tools and guidance to take ideas into action 
•  scale - to have real impact, we need to scale up, to amplify, to replicate, to expand

Our impact in the last 2 years:

1- EDUCATION CHALLENGES 2019-2020 

• 8.020 Expanded community reach  

• 3.300 Students activated 

• 40 Educators collaborated

• 20  Schools participated  (public and private)

2-COMPANY CHALLENGES 2019-2020 

• 1.461 Expanded community reach 

• 1.300 people activated

• 7  National medium-large companies 

• 3  Multinational companies 

3-GOVERNMENT CHALLENGES 2019-2020 

• 2.165 Expanded community reach 

• 140 Government representatives from Argentina activated

• 120 Citizens involved 

Our aim is to unplastify 1 millon people in 5 years that will impact in 10 millon tons of plastic avoided, which is more that the amount of plastic that enters to the ocean every year

How we are going to do it?

• Educational Challenge: Reach a network of +200 schools from Latin America and the Caribbean  -Working to unplastify their communities
• Company Challenge:  reach +15 regional latinamerican and caribbean organizations per year 
• Government Challenge: Support plastic regulation policies in +5 countries in Latin America and the caribbean