10 Years of 2 Minute!

November marked the 10th birthday of our very first hashtag #2minutebeachclean.  

That one idea, snowballed into a social media movement across the globe and celebrates over 200,000 hashtags of positive action to date.  

The brilliant idea, first posted on Instagram by Martin Dorey MBE was conjured up after he was knee deep in plastic on a local beach and vowed there and then to do something about it. He comments on the momentous milestone “who would have thought that this little (but mighty) idea would go around the world and become the thing that it is!”. 

The act had a knock-on effect where picking up became normalised. It was the catalyst for change as we saw followers setting up their own organisations. As our community grew, so did its impact.  

Over the decade, the clean-up campaigns encouraged people to pick up litter during their everyday, removing litter and harmful plastics from the places that they love, live and visited. 

Thanks to the BBC 

“A pivotal moment was when Blue Planet II said that doing a #2minutebeachclean is a great start to making positive change” says Nicky Green CEO. “That was huge for us”.  Shortly after, #2MinuteLitterPick was created to focus not just on the beaches, but upstream too. 

CEO Nicky Green adds “All waterways lead to the ocean and there was a growing need to focus on inland litter to stop it escaping into drains and into watercourses.” So much litter was making its way down storm drains, flushed down toilets and escaping into canals and rivers.  

Our Stations  

Next came the unique clean up Stations. The A frame signs with a slot for litter pickers and bags. They clean up their immediate area by 61%, mitigate littering and give their local community a sense of pride.

“We have over 1,200 that span across the UK and Ireland” says CEO Nicky Green.  

The heady mix of Stations, coastal and in-land pick up campaigns relating to everyone plus the power of social media was the complete ‘tool kit’ that individuals needed to effectively pick up litter. Tangible impact was being made on the ground, but with the link back to social media created a perpetuating cycle of positive social action and community connection.  

A holistic approach to planet positivity 

For a holistic approach to planet positivity, we set up #2minutesolution where we encourage reusables and promote simple swops to single use plastic and our overarching positivity campaign #2minutesofpositivity is weaved into everything that we do, promoting positivity through the climate crisis.  

Forging positive relationships through social media connectivity, using the Stations and having access to The 2 Minute Beach School and all of our environmental content that we post daily across social media, means that we encourage EVERYONE to be more planet positive.