Lilly Plastic Pickup
Updated: Jun 4, 2018
Lilly saw an opportunity to do something - where others might only see a problem for someone else to solve..
Lilly began her plastic pickup in 2015 when she was walking to McDonalds with her grandfather she saw so much rubbish on the ground she decided to count it. She was learning Dutch at the time and counted 91 pieces. She said she couldn’t decide if she was mad or sad but wanted to do something about it. Her grandfather had taught her that anything thrown on the ground will somehow make its way into the water ways and eventually the sea and she wanted to do her best to stop that.
After a pickup Lilly separate the rubbish into sections glass, cans plastic, cigarette packets etc and then photographs them and puts them on to social media. This attracted the attention of local media and the national eventually international media. The videos made about her have been translated and global distributed given her a wide following all over the world.
Lilly was recently asked to go to Norway to take part in the Plastic Whale Heritage conference with Sky Ocean Rescue. She met Afroz Shah and he has invited her to go to Mumbai to help inspire the children there.
Lilly has been placed in the top 100 influencers tackling plastic pollution at no.28. She was awarded the Groen Pluim by Groenlinks for her anti-plastic initiative.
For her birthday she asked to clean the world #lillysglobalcleanupday and people in 27 countries responded and did plastic pickups for her.
Lilly was invited to meet Dr Goodall in London at the Roots and Shoots event there where she told her all about her plastic project- her beehive project in Africa to help the elephants and that her grandfather was in Tanzania at the same time as her in 1960s and they both share a mutual friend Campbell.
Lilly is set to appear in brand new magazine Mission Magazine in their Environment issue. Mission magazine took over Women at Forbes for EarthDay and Lilly was featured alongside actor and founder of anti-straw movement Lonely Whale, Adrian Grenier to give the plastic Pollution message.
In order to help people refuse single use plastic Lilly has her own bamboo straw and spork set that people can take with them and reuse time and again.
Lilly Plastic Pickup is also included in educational material for schools from the Plastic Soup Foundation.