In order to educate, inspire and empower individuals worldwide, we need to provide the tools for them to engage. What are the tools you / your organization are offering for people to be part of the solution to plastic pollution?
The work I’m most engaged in now relates to the rarely discussed but important cognitive, emotional, psychological, social and spiritual benefits of healthy wild waters. Those benefits go out the window when plastic pollution is present. A beach makes us sad when it’s trashed, an ocean makes us sick when it’s polluted and a wave makes us mad. We need to speak strongly about the true value of healthy ocean and waterways.
The ocean is often described as a source of jobs, seafood, oxygen and biodiversity. But our assessment of the “blue economy” is dangerously incomplete and I think a lot of people find its commodification and reduction offensive because for them it’s also a source of solace, privacy, creativity, relaxation, romance, nostalgia and more. There’s an increasing understanding that oceans and waterways don't just give us life, they make life worth living.
In this way we are engaging with vast new groups of people who haven’t previously been part of the blue movement. I leave the evolving messaging about where to click and what to sign to others who work on those tools and campaigns and gladly share the links with our networks.
But when asked the common question “what one thing can I do for the ocean?” I ask it back: “What do you think?” And the answers I get are almost always very good, creative, informed and timely. Plus that person is far more likely to follow through on that action than the generic responses I could offer.
dr. Wallace "J." Nichols is a research associate at California Academy of Sciences and co-founder of OceanRevolution.org, an international network of young ocean advocates, of SEEtheWILD.org, a conservation travel network, GrupoTortuguero.org, an international sea turtle conservation network: and LiVBLUE.org, a global campaign to reconnect people to our water planet.
Perreault Magazine - 113 -