2023 has been named the Year of Sustainability in the UAE. The highlight will be COP28, the 28th UN Climate Change Conference, taking place in Expo City Dubai in December.
Finnish Business Council is organizing a series of sustainability related events and activities leading up to COP28 - one of them was the beach clean up we did at Kite Beach on the 18th of May.
We teamed up with Goumbook and their Save The Butts Campaign. Save the Butts – Waste to Value' is the first sustainability initiative run in the UAE that adopts a Circular Economy approach to environmental pollution, by converting discarded cigarette butts into a sustainable alternative to plywood. Cigarette butts are the most littered item in the world, and it takes 10-25 years for them to decompose as 95% of the butt is made out of plastic fibers.
On the 18th of May 20 Finnish Business Council members gathered ready to get their hands dirty. Marta Roman, Campaign Leader from Goumbook started off with a thought-provoking awareness session about how we can all contribute to keeping our oceans and environment clean.
In less than an hour in the Dubai summer heat, we had collected a total of 3300 cigarette butts which would otherwise have been left on the beach for at least another decade.
Thank you to all participants and to our fantastic main sponsor Kool Kollekt, who made this beach clean-up possible by covering the license cost. Scan Global Logistics and Bird Collaborative made sure we could all enjoy a well deserved breakfast after the activity!