Congratulations to Nicole and The Last Straw team

Over the past 3 years, Catarina Goncalves has been working extremely hard to finish her PhD thesis (she's oh-so-very-close now!). A number of her incredible data chapters have involved working side-by-side with the Australian community and in collaboration with the Tangaroa Blue Foundation.

We wanted to take a moment to acknowledge the achievements of one particular community group and person - The Last Straw team in north Queensland and their inspirational leader, Nicole Nash. Recently, aspects of this pollution-based project (and Nichol's job) were made redundant. You may wonder why we're celebrating something like this? Well, The Last Straw was so successful that during 2016-2021, >375 Queensland businesses signed up for the program and committed to switch from plastic straws 🥤 to paper straws. Ultimately, this lead to 22 million straws being removed from circulation 🤩 HUGE CONGRATULATIONS TO NICOLE AND HER TEAM AT THE LAST STRAW! 🙌

Over the next few months, Catarina and Adrift Lab are looking forward to supporting The Last Straw team as they seek additional feedback from the community (via a survey) - these survey data will hopefully support further analysis and positive change!