Durban University of Technology (DUT) student, Taylen Reddy (21) recently organised a Back to Campus Clean-up and Brand Audit in partnership with Zero Waste DURBAN at Steve Biko Campus.

The purpose of this initiative was to create a practical awareness and to involve other students to take part in achieving the goal by cleaning up the campus and educating the DUT community to be part of eliminating plastic pollution as plastics are his primary target.

Reddy is a third-year Bachelor of Applied Sciences in Biotechnology student. He is one of the 26 international youth ambassadors for Break Free From Plastic.

He is also the founder of the Zero Waste DURBAN which was established in 2020 to help raise awareness on climate change and the plastics crisis. However, due to the pandemic he was limited to conduct any practical work to carry on with his initiative and opted to social media to continue raising awareness.

The turnout for the event was good with 25 students that volunteered and participated in collecting 13 large bags of discarded plastics.

Reddy further mentioned that he has been working closely with an organisation called Break Free. The Break Free from plastic movement is a global movement envisioning a future free from plastic pollution. Since its launch in 2016, more than 11,000 organisations and individual supporters from across the world have joined the movement to demand massive reductions in single-use plastics and to push for lasting solutions to the plastic pollution crisis.

Their goal is to call out the highest corporate polluters and shift accountability for plastic pollution away from the public and back to these companies while pressuring them into rethinking their strategies and adopting more sustainable practices.

“This is done mainly through the annual global brand audit, which records data by hundreds of organisations that submit their brand audit results, just as I will after the plastic collected from DUT is separated and organised,” said Reddy.

One of the volunteers, Princess Sibisi commented that it felt good to take part in this campaign as it was her first time partaking in this on-going project by playing her part in cleaning up the DUT campus and taking part in eliminating pollution.

Reddy is set to conduct these clean-ups once a week in a month.

For more information on the organisation, go to: https://www.breakfreefromplastic.org/2022/08/15/break-free-from-plastic-welcomes-a-new-batch-of-youth-ambassadors-this-2022/

Pictured: Third-year Biotechnology students at the event.

Photographer: Nonkululeko Ngcobo

Nonkululeko Ngcobo