The brand audits were the collective effort of a coalition of 1101st Army Reserved Group, Sarangani Divers, Brgy. Almendras and SMSP Batch 80’s Advocacy for Environmental and Cultural Preservation, Inc. from Davao del Sur, Philippines
I coordinated with a dive buddy in General Santos City, Philippines for an underwater clean-up and introduced him and his team to #breakfreefromplastic and #BrandAudit2019.
After two meetings and few calls, we were able to get the management of London Beach Resort on board, who provided us with a space for brand auditing and even treated the volunteers to a sumptuous lunch. Sarangani Divers led the underwater clean-up with volunteer divers from the Philippine National Police, Mindanao State University, and Sox Divers. The local news station, ABS-CBN covered the event.
We conducted two dives on that day in poor visibility conditions, as silt was stirred up while picking up the trash. In spite of these conditions, we were able to collect around 40 bags of trash and audited 73 brands. The biggest percentage of trash collected was unnamed plastic cups, followed by Coke products and fishing lines.
Simultaneously, Barangay Almendras in Padada, Davao del Sur, mobilized by their active Chairman, also organized a clean-up on land. Volunteers went out and picked up trash along the streets and deposited the collection at the Barangay Hall for brand auditing.
23 September 2019
We started the brand audit of the trash collected by Barangay Almendras residents at 8:00am and finished around 3:30pm. The top three audited polluters using single-use plastics are Maxx Candy, Wings Detergent, and Hansel Biscuit respectively.
