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According to a United Nations report issued in June 2006, humankind's exploitation of the the deep seas and oceans is 'rapidly passing the point of no return'. I was really shocked to discover that there are on average around 46,000 pieces of plastic litter per square mile of ocean worldwide, leading to the death of over one million seabirds and over 100,000 marine mammals every year due to entanglement with or swallowing litter. Moreover, Greenpeace recently discovered that there is a vortex of floating pieces of plastic in the southern Pacific which is the size of Texas. Even worse, plastic can take 1000 years or more to degrade in seawater and even then continues to pollute our environment with thousands of microscopic fibres: samples of sand taken from a Northumbrian beach were found to have over 10,000 fibres per litre of sand...
I was so shocked that I was determined to do something about it. So I resolved to 'save' one square mile of ocean by collecting 46000 pieces of litter whilst walking on the beaches near my home. Every time I visited the beach I took 3 or 4 carrier bags and picked up all the litter I could carry. Whilst walking, I raised nearly £1000 for the Marine Conservation Society through sponsorship and sale of my unique seaside ‘souvenirs’. You can do your own bit to help by joining in the Marine Conservation Society's Coastal Challenge or by taking part in local river or beach clean-ups, such as Beachwatch. My challenge took exactly a year to achieve - in total I walked over 200kms and carried away nearly a third of a tonne of rubbish!
I have saved and photographed nearly everything from my walks - see some of my COLLECTIONS here
Earlier press releases: press release Sept 2007 press release May 2007 press release October 2006
OK, so one square mile isn't much and it may have taken me a year to do it but what if EVERYONE tried to do something? If you've got any brilliant ideas or want to tell us about what you've done, let me know what you're up to - and where - and e-mail me some photos and I'll post a link here. Let's do our bit now!!!!
remember when visiting our coastline and wild places, leave nothing but your footprint... |
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