With the Olympics almost upon us, many Team GB athletes have travelled half way around the world for the elite sporting event. A bit of our locale has gone with the team... in the form of bamboo toothbrushes.
Hitchin eco-enterprise @BambuuBrush has partnered with Big Plastic Pledge, gold medallist Hannah Mills and TeamGB to inspire people to make simple changes in their daily lives through supplying all Team GB athletes with @BambuuBrushes at this year’s Tokyo Olympic Games.
Within nine months of launching their business in 2019, Tommie Eaton and Rebecca Dudbridge of @BambuuBrush sold one million of their toothbrushes, and the duo have continued on their world-saving mission.
Tommie and Rebecca have spent a combined total of 14 years living and working around the world, and witnessed first hand how plastic pollution is negatively impacting our environment and people living in developing communities around the world.
Their mission to make sustainable actions accessible to all - through sales of their sustainable products - also propels charity projects, with all profits going towards relief campaigns.
They plan to open a Plastic Swap Shop in rural Ghana to collect and recycle plastic waste and continue to spread the message about plastic pollution through their workshops in schools and litter clean ups across the UK.
Olympic sailor Hannah Mills founded Big Plastic Pledge after the Rio Olympics in 2016. She said: “Sailing has taken me all over the world and for almost two decades I have noticed plastic in the oceans, mainly when it gets stuck under our boat and stops us dead in our tracks.
"But it didn’t resonate with me how bad the problem was getting until I witnessed first hand the devastating effects of plastic pollution on our oceans and planet. Every beach, marina and coastal area we visited during that four-year period was affected and damaged beyond belief.”
The Big Plastic Pledge’s mission is to encourage elite athletes to take a pledge to commit to refusing single use plastic when at sporting events and to create a tidal wave of change within sport.
With an early goal of the @BambuuBrush teams' being to send all athletes to the Tokyo Olympics with a @BambuuBrush, the enterprise's collaboration with Big Plastic Pledge made that dream a reality, with all competing athletes - over 450 of them - and 750 back-room staff receiving a @BambuuBrush within their official kit bags.
As part of the campaign, people are encouraged to take a photo of their @BambuuBrush wherever they are in the world and post on social media - to inspire more people to make One Simple Change - joining the likes of Richard Branson, Boris Johnson and Olympian Jason Gardner to spread the important message.
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