The Inspiring Individuals Saving Our Seas
The plastic problem often seems so incredibly vast as pictures fly in from around the globe showcasing the various stages of the plastic tide in multiple coastal locations. Sometimes these images come from the open ocean thousands of miles from land or even from kilometres under the surface; for many of us, these patches of plastic may as well be on the moon. It’s not just where our waste is either but the sheer number of people that create this unbelievable amount of rubbish and how quickly. In other words, almost every single person throws away an item of plastic every day, many people throw away multiple items. All these factors make the plastic problem a tricky one to solve, so much so that we can often become downhearted and lose our motivation. Well we’ve put together a very small collection of some incredibly inspiring individuals from around the globe who can remind us all that although we are mere individuals, we can still make a huge global impact, even with only tiny actions.
First up is Sian Sutherland, a self-proclaimed unlikely eco-warrior. Before taking on the plastic challenge, Sian ran a Michelin star restaurant and founded a skincare brand whose success crossed the Atlantic. She admits that both these ventures have left her plastic footprint sky high but that hasn’t stopped her creating ‘A Plastic Planet’. This initiative asks how can we be made to feel so bad about going to the supermarket and buying all our food wrapped in plastic when we have almost no choice in the matter? Yes, zero-waste shops are cropping up but for many, these alternatives are too expensive or inconvenient to slip easily into our daily habits. Therefore, ‘A Plastic Planet’ aims to have a plastic free aisle in every supermarket. Sian believes that tackling supermarkets will help cut off a lot of the supply of plastic rubbish, 40% of which derives from packaging. From all her hard work, the world’s first plastic free supermarket aisle opened in Amsterdam in February 2018 and includes a mighty 700 products! Since then, several more plastic free aisles have been opened but it is still yet to become a mainstream practice. However, by supporting supermarkets with a plastic reduction scheme you can make a statement about the kind of world you want to create which will hopefully spur on the ocean-friendly slackers. Sian hopes the message we take away from all her work is that we can make a difference right now, we don’t have to wait five or ten more years for more people to get on board the zero-waste bandwagon; we can start today.
Our next plastic star has achieved a similar large scale reduction in single use plastic but, this time, in Indonesia. Tiza Mafira is the director of the Indonesia Plastic Bag Diet Movement which, in 2015, created a petition to ban the sale of single use plastic bags. Within only a year, a nationwide trial of a plastic bag tax was introduced and within six months, the country cut its use of bags by 55%! Today the bag tax remains while some cities and provinces have decided to go even further and ban these plastic offenders altogether. Tiza says that while the plastic problem is frequently overwhelming, the solution is beautifully simple; we just need to start refusing plastic. She hopes from this simplicity, we can all draw hope. From only one individual, a nationwide shift has occurred and this change has happened in a country which is the second largest contributor to ocean plastic! That makes the work for the rest of us sound a little easier, no?
Children are often a great source of inspiration with their seemingly unending imagination, determination and enthusiasm. It also seems our younger generation are really jumping on board with our ocean dilemma, with today’s children eagerly scouring our shores for mysterious pieces of salty trash. So maybe we should look to children for our greatest source of inspiration? One primary school in Glasgow created a petition and sent it straight to Glasgow City Council asking for immediate action. They got it too! The City Council has now banned all plastic straws in their public outlets, restaurants and school canteens which signifies a huge drop in this unnecessary product. The class didn’t stop there either as they took a school trip to Ullapool where they collaborated with the local wildlife trust and another primary school to convince all restaurants in the town to scrap the straw! Straws are even now banned on the Caledonian MacBrayne ferries which ship day trippers and tourists to Scotland’s outer islands, a scheme which is getting holidaymakers from multiple locations really thinking about their consumption of plastic and helping spread their message beyond Scottish towns.
Bude in Cornwall, England seems to be a hub of ocean loving entrepreneurs with two local schemes going global. Natalie Fee created ‘Refill’ in 2014 as in the last 15 years, our consumption of plastic water bottles has doubled, meaning one million plastic bottles are now bought every minute globally. If only 1 in 10 Brits refilled their water bottles once a week, we’d stop 340 million bottles ending up in the trash every year. From these statistics, Natalie and the regional water company set about promoting free tap refills and encouraging local businesses to be part of their scheme offering thirsty walkers, workers or window shoppers a free refill of their reusable bottle. This simple yet effective idea has now spread to 20 countries including Chile, Iceland and Italy. It really makes you wonder why such a small act is not part of our daily lives anyway.
The second entrepreneur from Cornwall is Martin Dorey who, in 2013, started the hashtag #2minutebeachclean after a set of heavy winter storms in the Atlantic swept enormous piles of debris onto Cornish shores. He used Twitter and Instagram to promote his simple message asking others to spend only two minutes clearing the mass of fishing nets, plastic bottles and food wrapping littering the tide line. Once they’d done this, he asked them to share all their work on social media using the hashtag. From this simple idea, #2minutebeachclean is now a global initiative working with campaign groups and blue flag operators in multiple countries as social media proves its worth by connecting individuals to form a new global community.
Another beach cleaner sparking tremendous change is Afroz Shah who was appalled at the knee-deep waste piling up on Versova beach in Mumbai. In 2015, he and his neighbour started collecting the never-ending pile of trash the grey waves were sweeping onto the junkyard of a shoreline. For almost two months, onlookers just stared in disbelief but slowly, volunteers started joining them until the beach was full of everyone from slum dwellers to Bollywood stars all armed with binbags. Today, Afroz and his neighbour’s simple weekend beach clean has transformed into the world’s largest beach clean with over 15 million kilograms of rubbish removed, allowing turtles to return to the newly rediscovered sand.
Our last plastic hero is Ben Lecomte, an extreme ocean swimmer who, in 2019, swam from Honolulu to San Francisco across the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, the largest accumulation of plastic in the world. Over the course of three months, he swam 300 miles, one mile to mark every one million tonnes of plastic produced globally each year. His swim was guided by satellites which pointed Ben towards the most polluted areas of the sea and whilst he pounded the waves, his team collected hundreds of water samples and extensive data on the level of microplastics and microfibres in this relatively unknown patch of ocean. Throughout his challenge, Ben aimed to bring the issue of plastic pollution right into people’s homes through their TV or social media channels whilst educating them on how we can turn off the plastic tap.
As you can see, there are many wonderful people in our world making astonishing change from relatively simple actions and these are only a few in hundreds, thousands even. Whilst you’re battling the wind on a deserted beach to grab that ripped plastic bag or while you watch every other shopper around you grab plastic wrapped vegetables, you may feel pretty tiny and helpless in the plastic problem. Yet individuals can make, do make and are taking a stance to protect our beautiful blue planet. If they can, so can we.
By Neve McCracken-Heywood