Not all lawyers stay in the office or the courtroom. Letícia Abreu Passos de Souza grew up seeing the damage caused by pollution in her native Brazil - and now she’s using the law to do something about it.

As Director of Legal and Public Affairs at The Ocean Cleanup, Letícia guides our crew through different laws and rules in countries around the world - as well as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. She tells Catching Up how understanding local laws helps us work with local authorities in the best way and makes our Interceptor deployments more efficient - helping us catch plastic faster and with greater impact.

Letícia tells us the importance of having ‘boots on the ground’ to truly understand how the law can help tackle plastic pollution in a local community, and shares her hopes for a new world effort to solve the problem through a Global Plastics Treaty.

Learn more on how we contribute to law and public policy here: https://theoceancleanup.com/global-public-affairs/

See our blogpost on cleanup and the Global Plastics Treaty here: https://theoceancleanup.com/updates/global-plastics-treaty-why-legacy-plastic-cleanup-is-essential/