Depeche Mode partners with Conservation Collective to tackle plastic pollution

Depeche Mode and Hublot announce the first round of projects to be supported through the Memento Mori Tour charity partnership. In Italy Sicily Environment Fund and Marevivo will carry on the Plastic Free Schools Small Islands project, to reduce single use plastic in Sicilian islands.

Seven projects, seven countries, tangible impact 

Conservation Collective, a global network of foundations promoting grassroots environmental initiatives, has today announced the first beneficiaries of a charity partnership it has struck with Depeche Mode during its Memento Mori world tour.  

The projects, which will tackle plastic pollution, are taking place in locations including Ibiza, Cyprus, Kenya and Sri Lanka, and are being funded via a collaboration between the British band and the luxury watchmaker, Hublot.  

We’re so thrilled about this partnership which brings funds and visibility to boost the impactful projects our foundations are supporting. Whilst we cannot purely recycle our way out of the plastic crisis, we can pull a multitude of levers to reduce the amount of waste created, and drive systems change to stem the tide and remove the chokehold that it is creating on our vulnerable ecosystems worldwide. Ben Goldsmith, founder and Chair of Conservation Collective 

According to the UN Environment Programme:

Every minute, the equivalent of one truck of plastic is dumped into our ocean.  

Plastic pollution is a global problem. Approximately 7 billion of the 9.2 billion tonnes of plastic produced from 1950-2017 became plastic waste, ending up in landfills or dumped elsewhere. 

Plastic pollution can alter habitats and natural processes, reducing ecosystems’ ability to adapt to climate change, directly affecting millions of people’s livelihoods, food production capabilities and social well-being.  

The funding received by Conservation Collective from the Depeche Mode & Hublot charity partnership will be channelled to member foundations, to support the following projects:  

Plastic-free programmes: reducing the consumption of single-use and other plastic waste by engaging businesses, providing sustainable alternatives, and through campaigning and education.

• Sicily Environment Fund – Plastic free schools small islands (Italy): a campaign and competition to reduce single-use plastics in schools across 14 of Sicily’s islands, awarding 3 schools with water filtration machines. 
• IbizaPreservation – Plastic Free Ibiza and Formentera (Spain): working with businesses in the hospitality and tourism industry to reduce single-use plastics and promote a circular economy. 
• Cyprus Environment Foundation – Plastic Free Beach (Cyprus): Empowering the Plastic-Free Beach concept in Cyprus through promotional events and working with local municipalities to ensure they stay that way!

Community-led waste management: diverting waste from landfill, upcycling, recycling and composting.

• Ionian Environment Foundation – Sin.Praxi, Ionian (Greece): innovative waste management, education and circular economy project enabling the local community to protect its patch. 
• Lamu Environment Foundation – Kiunga Marine Reserve Clean-up, Lamu (Kenya): working together in a remote archipelago to gather and process plastic waste responsibly, including upcycling to create building materials. 

Clean–ups: giving nature a better chance of surviving by reducing the threat of plastic pollution within the marine environment 

• Lanka Environment Fund – Cleaner Seabeds (Sri Lanka): one of Sri Lanka’s first large-scale efforts through volunteer dive expeditions to remove marine litter (mostly fishing gear) from the reefs. 
• Devon Environment Foundation – Till the Coast is Clear (UK): Recovering plastic pollution from hard-to-reach locations on the South Devon coast using motor vessels and kayaks made from recycled fishing nets through a dedicated volunteer network. 

We believe it is important to start from schools to help increase information on the need to introduce a limited and more aware use of single-use plastic. In almost all Sicilian schools and especially in small islands, water is purchased by students in plastic bottles dispensed by vending machines. Frequent consumption generates an enormous production of plastic waste as well as high disposal costs and risks of dispersion into the environment. The introduction of drinking water dispensers in schools and plastic reduction can produce a multiplier effect of good practices, which can involve families and the entire community, contributing to correct behaviours, to limit pollution and protect small and fragile territories. Fabio Galluzzo, Vice President of Marevivo Onlus

In conjunction with Live Nation’s Green Nation team, Depeche Mode and Hublot are also enacting programs on tour and at the venues focusing on limiting the use of single-use plastics, improved recycling, food and other waste reduction, and other sustainability-related initiatives. On the first 10 North American dates of the tour alone, these initiatives prevented over 1.3 tons of single-use plastics from being used at shows and led to over 14 tons of waste being diverted from landfills through composting and recycling. 

The second session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee to develop an international legally binding instrument on plastic pollution, including in the marine environment, occurred earlier this month 2023 at the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Headquarters in Paris, France.   

We encourage people and businesses, with strong connections to any of these places, to donate funds and spread the word about our work, so that we can provide more support to local initiatives, raise awareness of climate and biodiversity issues, promote collective action, and encourage communities and businesses to act more sustainably to kick start systemic change. 

Follow Conservation Collective to see project updates and to learn about more projects supported thanks to this partnership. 

We were initially drawn to Conservation Collective as a charity partner due to how tangible the work they’re doing is. So we’re exceptionally proud to be a part of supporting and helping them expand these programs in Europe, Africa, and Asia that will meaningfully reduce plastic waste and clean up existing plastic pollution. Dave Gahan & Matin Gore, Depeche Mode