Sustainability begins at HOME (Helping Our Marine Environment) is an initiative funded by USAID’s Clean Cities, Blue Ocean (CCBO) program. CCBO is USAID’s five-year, $48 million flagship program to respond to the global crisis of ocean plastic pollution.

Our main objective of the HOME project was to bring about behaviour and social change through engagement with households to reduce their use of Single Uuse Plastics (SUPs). The HOME project did this by working with households in Hulhumale using a Social and Behaviour Change approach to reduce SUPs at a household-level through trialing alternatives to SUPs. This project supports the SUP phase-out plan announced by the Government of Maldives in 2020 - by synergising our work with existing environment policies and strategies, we will aid the journey towards the complete phase out of single-use plastics in the Maldives.

A survey was conducted in Hulhumale' to understand the household patterns which contribute to plastic consumption behaviour, to bring about appropriate social and behaviour change.
The findings infomed the indepth engagement with households to test alternatives to SUPs, which was the next stop in the project.
Read the full report.

A Social and Behaviour Change (SBC) approach was used for a long-term engagement with 12 households in Hulhumale' to trial alternatives to SUPs. This approach emphasizes that social and environmental factors must be considered for bringing behaviour change. A 2-week waste audit was conducted to understand the plastic waste consumption of the households, after which 7 alternatives to SUPs were trialed by the households.
Read the full report.

The journey of the 12 households trialing alternatives to SUPs was shown as a 6-episode docuseries. This series documents the experience of transitioning to a plastic-free lifestyle - discussing what worked, what didn't, and the challenges that were faced by the households and how they overcame them. This series is available for streaming on YouTube and Baiskoafu.