Paddle
against
Plastic
This August I
paddled 260
miles around
the entire
Cornish coast
and into north
Devon. I didn’t
do it for fun, or
for a personal
challenge, and
in fact didn’t
really consider
the magnitude
of the
challenge until
about two
hours into
setting off,
dripping in
sweat, hyperventilating and
shovelling Kit
Kats into my
mouth, head
down paddling
into 20mph
headwinds. A
sign of things
to come!
I had never undertaken a challenge like this before, but the
reasons behind it had been brewing for a while. I wanted to
find a way with which to empower people to make a
difference to the health of our oceans. We are told relentlessly
about the marine litter crisis and the amount of plastic in the
oceans, but rarely are we shown simple solutions as to what
we as individuals can do to help alleviate the problem! I
wanted to bring a message of positivity that actually there is
one really simple thing that we can do, as ocean lovers, to
help protect our oceans; our beloved playground.
It is estimated that we use 13 billion plastic bottles a year in
the UK – 13 BILLION! They are one of the most common
things that wash up on UK beaches, and pollute our oceans.
Many of them are single use water bottles. And yet, in the UK
we are blessed with clean, safe, abundant drinking water in
our taps! So do we really need to be using so many? In
exchange for my challenge, which really did turn out to be
rather challenging, I challenged my followers to go the
summer without buying a plastic water bottle and instead to
use a refillable bottle, saving money and reducing plastic
pollution at the same time.
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