We are extending our campaign!
Starting with a huge THANK YOU!
As we are writing this post, 145 passionate people have already showed us: you believe in Plastic Mountains! Like us, you think that getting into costumes made from plastic waste and hiking across the alps is a crazy idea - but something worth doing in the global fight against the plastic crisis.
Our whole team wants to send you a huge thank you for being a part of this, and enabling us to make a difference. Your contribution and the tireless work of our 35+ volunteers from all over the planet is what makes this happen. Thank you!
Updates from our costumes
All of our four costumes are now finalized, and we are very excited to share some pictures. Isabella Kiechle, Johanna Alscheken, Giuseppe Cicivizzo and Susanne Schmid from our costumes and arts team have created masterpieces from single-use plastics that are each unique in their own way. From PET-bottles to plastic bags, fisher nets and food containers you can find all sorts of plastics in there, so they serve as constant reminders of what we want to change. They are also quite fun, beautiful (as I find) and safe for our hikers and the environment: Pieces were securely sewn to backpack covers, which allow for a great surface area and visibility while making sure nobody is put in dangerous situations when they walk in stormy weather, high altitudes or climb through a via ferrata on the way
Plastic Mountains in the news
Our first press release came out yesterday (check it out here: https://www.presseportal.de/pm/156988/4962146) and the German Newspaper Merkur was the first to publish an article about it (http://www.merkur.de/lokales/bad-toelz/bad-toelz-ort28297/mode-aus-muell-alpenueberquerung-weist-auf-plastik-krise-hin-90845726.html). We got more interviews lined up for the weekend, so keep your eyes peeled :) And if you think your local newspaper or radio channel should speak about this, just pass them our contact: https://impactrevolution.eu/contact/
Kickoff event (10 July) and start of hike (11 July) in Munich
On Saturday, we’re celebrating the start of Plastic Mountains from 12-17h at the Kulturstrand in Munich. Feel free to come by, meet the team and see the costumes first hand. We’re looking forward to welcoming you there!
Also, you can come along and hike day one of plastic mountains with us. Meet us on Sunday 11 July at 8.30AM CET on Marienplatz. We’ll snap a press picture at 9AM CET and start walking right after.
Extension of our crowdfunding campaign
Doing a crowdfunding campaign is an absolutely thrilling experience - you’re suddenly out there, vulnerable and up to the faith of everyone else to test if your project is actually worth pursuing. As many other crowdfunding platforms, startnext projects are set up following the “all-or-nothing” principle: You either make it to your funding goal and get access to your donations, or you get nothing at all. You may have noticed that at the time of contributing, there was no money taken from your account: The amount you selected is merely blocked on your account, and it will only be taken once the whole campaign reaches the threshold. Until then, nothing is yet secured.
We can only say that we’ve learned a lot during this crowdfunding phase, and it was way more intense than we imagined, especially the pressure the all-or-nothing aspect of the campaign. In hindsight, we might have tried to make more elements of this campaign optional and start with a lower threshold, or allow ourselves more time for the funding phase. For the latter, we have great news: After talking to startnext, we have been given the chance to extend the campaign by one week!! We believe a lot of the buzz and attention around Plastic Mountains will grow once we are actually on our way, so this first week of hiking may be essential for the final push of our crowdfunding campaign. We hope that we can reach a lot more people in person and through media coverage than we did so far through our own means, partners and connections, and we are very grateful for these extra days to hopefully reach our funding goal.
Regards from the whole team
All of us that have been working to make this happen - no matter if that means finding partners remotely from the UK, building costumes in Italy and Germany, writing press releases from Pakistan, Austria and Germany, organizing event logistics from all over the world or setting up the kickoff plans and route details in Munich (and so many more tasks done from all sorts of places!) - want to give you supporters a huge shoutout. We are truly amazed and grateful for the support you have given us, for the shares, the kind words and financial contributions. Thank you for empowering us to move plastic mountains - we cannot wait for it to finally start!
Best wishes,
Clara & the Impact Revolution team
