Iceland Foods Charitable Foundation (IFCF) and national marine conservation charity Surfers Against Sewage (SAS) have announced a new two-year partnership to grow the Plastic-Free Communities movement and take the fight against avoidable single-use plastic across the UK.

Building on the success of SAS’s Plastic-Free Communities initiative, launched in 2017, the new partnership will further help galvanize individuals, small businesses, local government, schools and community groups to take action to reduce their collective single-use plastic footprint and reduce their impact on the local environment.

As part of this initiative, the partnership will expand one of the UK’s largest ever environmental clean-ups, the Big Spring Beach Clean, to include mountain and street cleans, alongside hundreds of rivers and beaches. The Big Spring Beach Clean: Summit to Sea will take place in April 2019 and 2020, and will tackle plastic and litter in at least 1,500 communities with the support of over 100,000 volunteers.

The partnership follows Iceland’s commitment at the beginning of 2018 to be the first retailer globally to commit to removing plastic from all own label food products by the end of 2023.

Richard Walker, trustee of the Iceland Foods Charitable Foundation and managing director of Iceland Foods said: “Iceland Foods Charitable Foundation and Surfers Against Sewage are passionate about tackling the scourge of plastic head on and we know that momentum is building in communities across the UK. Iceland has a presence on high streets up and down the country so it seems only fitting that we should engage at a community level, encouraging individuals and organisations to join us as we move towards fulfilling our own plastics commitment.”

The IFCF has donated over £20m to good causes in the UK in the last 20 years. Since 2010 it has focused principally on fundraising for dementia research, donating £10m to UCL Dementia Research to help fund construction of the London hub of the new UK Dementia Research Institute, more than £3m to Alzheimer’s Research UK, and over £1m to the Alzheimer’s Society and Alzheimer Scotland.

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