Clean Up The Oceans By Buying Plastic Shorts?

Riz Smith, who has been variously described as a designer, gentleman surfer and conservationist, has come up with an idea to rid the oceans of plastic litter. He’s going to turn your Evian bottle into designer boardshorts. On his website, Riz states: 

Umm... Bees?

Our mission is to make beautiful boardshorts for a beautiful plastic-free ocean.  Experts estimate that there are 46,000 pieces of plastic in every square mile of the ocean. We don't want our shorts to end up littering landfills or oceans. So, in an effort to do our part, we’ve developed the Rizcycling programme.

Rizcycling means working with our customers to create a perpetual loop that transforms waste and worn out swimwear into beautiful new products.  

We will be working with our partners The Marine Conservation Society in 2015 to hold 10 Riz-sponsored beach clean-ups that gather 25,000 pieces of beach plastic.

Our ultimate aspiration is to turn ocean and beach plastics, the water bottles that end up floating in the sea or littering beaches, into beautiful shorts

We are working with fabric manufacturers and other brands to figure out how this process can work, so that by 2016 our first short can be made from ocean plastics.

Riz Smith, through his contacts with The Marine Conservation Society will collect loads of plastic bottles from the oceans and make them into boardshorts. We, the customers, will then buy the shorts and when they wear out or we tire of the style, we’ll hand them back to Riz in return for a discount on another pair. Closed loop recycling as Riz calls it.

Riz's closed loop system

That sounds like a brilliant idea. Buy some shorts and the oceanic plastic problem is solved. Now if Riz makes a yellow and blue bikini the Ukrainian issue will be solved too!

The thing is, after pondering a bit, we started to see some flaws in the idea.

Firstly lets look at the numbers. On his website Riz mentions that experts estimate (the word expert and the word estimate used together can easily be read as: some blokes say) that there are 46,000 pieces of plastic in every square mile of the ocean. 

Seriously! In every square mile? That doesn’t sound right to us.

Wouldn’t it be better to say that: if you separate out all the plastic in the ocean into equal square mile sections, there would be 46,000 pieces in every section – at a guess. (Sorry but one of us is very pedantic about statistics) To make a start on this vast mountain, Riz is going to organise 10 sponsored beach clean-ups this year that will gather 25,000 pieces of plastic. That’s not even one square mile of ocean sorted out, but never mind 10 beaches get cleaned and that’s a good thing, but who is doing all this collecting? Are beach clean-ups going to be the way that the company gets it’s raw materials if so will it be yearly sponsored collections? Will the collectors eventually be paid?

The reason we ask, is that imagine that Riz’s idea takes off, imagine he starts making some serious money. Would you give your free time in order to provide a cost free labour source for a profit making business? And what if the collections are taking place, not in the UK or rich western countries but poorer ones? Are the citizens of those countries going to be asked to do the collecting for nothing? Eventually, someone, somewhere is going to want to see some money for all the effort.

The 5 Ocean Gyres where plastic accumulates

Another problem is that most of the oceans plastic is not in fact littering beaches. Instead it is floating in huge Gyres the largest of which, known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, contains around 1/3 of all oceanic plastic. So even if you did clean up all the beaches in the UK or even the world, you won’t have cleared a fraction of the circulating oceanic plastic.

An even bigger issue with this is that Riz doesn’t seem to have solved the issue of how he is actually going to turn oceanic plastic into boardshorts. In his own words, it remains an aspiration and that’s why he is currently running a crowdfunding campaign to raise the funds so that he can work with manufacturers and others to see how the process will work. Umm… !

Despite this issue, Riz has set a target of 2016 for the first boardshorts to be made from recycled ocean plastic. What if this aspiration can’t be achieved? What if the manufacturers think it is economically unviable or just that the manufacture of such items is unfeasible. 

 

Riz currently sells his boardshorts, made from recycled fabric, for £80 a pop. Now that’s pretty pricey for a pair of recycled shorts and there is no reason to assume that those made from plastic are going to be cheaper. Obviously Riz might be going for a bit of exclusivity in his branding, a sort of snob value for the denizens of Hampstead and Notting Hill and he might not be remotely interested in mass marketing to the rest of us. Which does tend to raise another possibility. He might not sell very many shorts at all. So all that collected plastic will have to be turned into something else – like bottles for instance.

Of course we don’t imagine for one minute that Riz Smith is not a genuine guy, genuinely thinking about new and imaginative ideas to promote ocean conservation and he may have seen an opportunity to create a sustainable business model. After all the Great Ocean Clean Up project (the most successful crowdfunding project in history) has published their feasibility study on cleaning up the ocean gyres and maybe Riz has realised that if they are successful in 2019, there’s going to be a lot of plastic available for recycling.

Any idea that promotes the preservation of the ocean environment, or actually does something about it, is always to be welcomed and there are a great many organisations out there doing great things.

However, this particular idea has been making us argue between ourselves so much that our beer went flat. Conservation and business rarely mix; when money and profit become involved the lines become very blurry indeed. Add to that fact, that despite our hopes that Riz is onto something, we get a sense that this is a bit gimmicky, a bit fashion world tokenism that generates sales by playing on middle class guilt. Sure you drive a petrol guzzling 4X4 and chuck away more rubbish than the population of Timbuktu but don’t worry, just buy a pair of Riz Smith’s boardshorts and a bag for life and the Karma is balanced. So no matter how well intentioned, this idea seems to be really nothing more than a good selling point for Riz’s boardshorts and we doubt it will do anything to deal with the problem except maybe to highlight the issue at the odd dinner party in London. If you fancy a pair plastic shorts then be our guest, but if you truly want to help with the conservation of the ocean - get involved or donate to these organisations below. And If you see anyone chucking a plastic bottle into the ocean, do what we do - chuck them in after it!

 

Project Aware

Marine Conservation Society

The Ocean Clean Up Project

Skiathos Island

A Dangerous Snorkelling Club Quick Guide

Skiathos has a mixed reputation. For some its myriad beaches, bustling capital and good transport links make it the destination of choice for bit of summer sun. For others its myriad beaches, bustling capital and good transport links means it’s full of tourists and therefore best avoided. However it has been rated as one of the best snorkelling destinations in Europe. So we decided to brave the hordes of package holidaymakers and see for ourselves.

 

Dangerous Snorkelling Weather

The History Bit 

Since ancient times the islands strategic position always drew unwanted attention. The first settlers were Ionians followed in turn by Athenians, Macedonians and the inevitable Romans. It became a Turkish possession in around 1539 eventually winning freedom in 1829. Skiathos is the birthplace of two of Greece’s most famous novelists; Alexandros Moraitidis and Alexandros Papadiamantis. That’s all we could find out about the place, so unlike other islands it is a little bereft of historical interest.

The Snorkelling Bit

There are some things that the modern Greeks don’t seem to understand such as taxes. For the visitor however, a more important lapse in their understanding is the idea of tarmac. The roads in many Greek islands leave much to be desired but in Skiathos they reach new heights of car damaging roughness, in fact it appears that no road maintenance has been carried out since the Romans marched around the place.

This means that getting to the best snorkelling beaches in the north of the island can be an adventure in itself. The two best beaches we found were Megali Auselinos and Mikri Auselinos. Both are reached via a bumpy, suspension-wrecking dirt track. At Mikri Auselinos however, you also need to navigate your way down a steep, ankle-twisting path before you reach the welcoming soft sand. We arrived at 7:30 in the morning at both sites, a good hour before the bewildered beach bar owners and three full hours before another tourist arrived. On either beach you should take a short swim around the headlands on either side to find the rocky seabed where the most interesting marine life hang out. Look out for Jellyfish, fireworms and small shoals of needlefish. To the right of Mikri Auselinos there is small beach nestling below a steep cliff face, which makes it unreachable from the landside and so utterly deserted. We spent three full days here just Snorkelling around in perfect solitude. Another option is to hire a boat from Troulos beach on the southern side of the island and head for the myriad uninhabited islands to the South East. However just as Greek Ferries don’t run when the wind blows from the wrong direction, the merest hint of poor weather, such as a cloud, and the boat hire company will decline your business on the grounds that having survived the drive down to the beach, your luck must surely run out some time and you and their boat will never be seen again. The island boasts many other beaches including Meghas Ghialos, which is a spear fishing and diving hotspot, we however found the other beaches, including Meghas Ghialos, were too crowded and lacking in the marine interest of the Northern Beaches. A word of warning; the north coast can be very windy and the sea quite rough. These are the type of conditions we look for, but, if you are interested in more sedate snorkelling, ensure that the wind is blowing from the south to guarantee the conditions are more suitable.

Common Fried Egg Jellyfish

The Tourist Blurb

Beaches, beaches, beaches. If your idea of a holiday is lounging about on sun drenched beaches, cocktail in hand, then Skiathos has much to offer. The beaches on the south coast have long stretches of golden sound and boast a variety of water sports. Should a glance in the mirror reveal a cooked lobster glow and you decide that a day off the beach is called for then a trip to the capital of Skiathos town is a good alternative. Skiathos Town has the usual array of tourist “boutiques”, shops, cafes and tourist trap amenities but a wander around the narrow streets and port is an interesting experience. Those of you with more cultural interests will however be disappointed. Yes Skiathos has churches and a 12^th century fortress but these don’t really have the appeal that other islands historic sites have and there is the overwhelming sense that the island has waved a dismissive hand towards the highbrow in favour of lowest common denominator tourism. That said though, as a snorkelling destination, Skiathos is well worth its rating as one of the best in Europe. The more adventurous types among you, those who are prepared to rise early and brave the cold morning sea should encounter a surprising variety of marine life that more than makes up for the islands other shortcomings, except of course the bloody roads!

The Path to Mikri Auselinos

The Tourist Q & A

Which is the best restaurant?

There are a great many restaurants and tavernas on the island and like all Greek islands they pretty much serve the same fayre. From the tourist chatter we heard, the two most highly regarded were the Windmill Restaurant in Skiathos Town and Salt & Pepper in Troulos. Both require you to make a reservation…. No Kidding! We were unable to get one at the Windmill but did manage to eat twice at Salt & Pepper. Salt & Pepper calls itself a garden restaurant, which means you are seated near grass! The food was nothing exceptional but clearly of higher quality than you would normally expect from the islands. The price wasn’t too bad either, if you have ever had a meal in London or New York the cost of a meal for four with wine won’t bring tears to your eyes – if you haven’t dined outside Scunthorpe before, you’re probably going to need oxygen. Apparently, and this is purely what the waiter told us, a number of major celebrities are often to be seen dining here, though he didn’t elaborate on who exactly, nor on how he defines “major” or “celebrity for that matter

Are there any good bars?

That depends on what you define as a bar. Skiathos Town suffers from that evil affliction of the lounge bar so we obviously refused to spend anytime in those. In Troulos there is the Christiakis Sports Bar which labels itself as the only bar in Skiathos that has BBC, ITV and Sky Sports. That of course means it has a lot of Televisions showing repeats of live matches and lots of Brits looking for a home-from-home experience. The majority of the bars, including Christiakis, are part of hotel set-ups the rest and there are many, are your average Taverna affair. All are okay for a few hours of Après-snorkel drinking but none of them are exceptional.

The Other Stuff

Wasps! The island, particularly the South, is infested with the infamous Skiathos wasp. These are not your usual, Irritating, picnic-wrecking insects. The Skiathos wasp is a particularly persistent little bugger. Every beach, especially around mid morning, echoes to sound of infuriated sunbathers cursing loudly whilst furiously waving towels, sandals and hats around in a futile attempt to get rid of the little blighters. Note: waving things in the air does not make the wasps go away; it just makes them angry! The only thing that we found that works was cigarette smoke. That of course is not an option if you don’t smoke or have someone in your group who does and more importantly, is prepared to go through fifty a day to keep the air clear of the striped pests. If this is the case your only option is to head for the water. A sting from these sods is painful but no more so than your average wasp, it’s just that by the third sting the pain seems to merge into one day-wrecking throb.

The Skiathos Cat

Not particularly part of the guide, but Skiathos also has an infestation of feral cats. Some are mangy, one-eyed, flea bitten wretches whilst others are impossible not to fall head-over-heels in love with. So let us introduce you to the cat we adopted for ten, leg-scratching, days. Ladies and Gentlemen we give you Psycho the Cat in usual contented pose. 

The Statistical Stuff

Population: 4000+

Area: 48 Sq. Km.

How to get there: Charter flights from major European airports operate during the summer months. Schedule flights operate year round from Athens; Ferry links operate from all major islands in the region.

Sport Diving Needs A Hero: It Ain't You Brad

In the editors letter in the March edition of Sport Diver (the official publication of the PADI diving association in the UK), the editor, Mark Evans, reflects on the sad death of the “First Lady of Diving” Lotte Haas in January of this year and asks: where are all the new diving heroes? 

Mark Evans writes: Lotte, together with her husband Hans, pioneered scuba diving adventures on the silver screen in the 1950’s and along with charismatic Frenchman Jacques-Yves Cousteau, were responsible for getting entire generations actively involved in our sport by bringing a whole new world to an excited audience. Mark goes on to say: We desperately need modern day heroes’ of this calibre to bring the underwater world to the masses.  

Mark highlights that there are the likes of Steve Backshall, Miranda Krestovnikoff and Monty halls (and before you ask, we don’t know either), who are all doing their bit to raise the profile of diving through more-mainstream channels, but the likes of Lotte, Hans and Cousteau were mega-stars of their time whose appeal spanned the globe and captured the attention of young and old alike.

Mark then makes a final appeal: going forward, we also need Hollywood to splash diving all the cinemas again, but in a positive, engaging and exciting fashion – no more Open Water rubbish thank you!

Mark’s lament, first got us raising our glasses in a last tribute to the late, great and gorgeous Lotte Haas and then putting them down again as we ruminated on his words. Is he right? Does diving lack modern heroes? And if so, why?

Lotte Haas

Our first thought was, that to a degree, Mark has answered his own question. Lotte, Hans, Jacques-Yves Cousteau et al, were exactly what he said they were: pioneers. They broke new ground, they invented and then developed their own equipment, they often risked their lives and like others of their ilk (Ron and Valerie Taylor anyone?) they brought the diving world to a whole new audience. They were definitely heroes, but more to the point they were heroes of their time. In the fifties and sixties the ability to travel to exotic locations and then plunge into the azure ocean in search of adventure were limited to a wealthy few. Back in the 1950’s, World War Two was still a deep, dark scar on the world. In Britain for example, a holiday adventure in 1950 was little more than a camping trip to a damp field in Cornwall or a dreary weekend in a rainy seaside town – grandparents included. Diving back then was something few people outside of the Navy had ever even heard of and even if they had, we bet they had very little money to squander on unproven diving equipment and, as often as not, unproven airlines. The underwater adventures of Lotte Haas were therefore pure escapism, something that captured your imagination in the local cinema rather than something you got involved with on your local beach. Nowadays of course, anyone with a passport and a few pounds in their pocket can pop on a plane and in less than a working day be walking barefoot on an idyllic sandy beach. The escapist world of Lotte and Hans is no longer something that you can only dream about on a wet night in Scunthorpe, but something you can actually do yourself. The world of diving is now, more than ever, open to far more than any of the early pioneers could have imagined. Perhaps, though, that is part of the problem. If every paradise isle is jammed packed with divers, all doing exactly the same thing, with exactly the same GoPro camera, where is the originality? To be a pioneer you have to do something that someone else hasn’t done before.

Then we thought about Mark’s plea to Hollywood: We also need Hollywood to splash diving all over the cinemas again, but in a positive, engaging and exciting fashion.

So Mark wants Hollywood to make a film all about diving, but not one that shows any of the inherent dangers of going into an environment that evolution has singularly made you unsuitable for. Instead he wants Hollywood to make a film that is inspiring, engaging, exciting and well, just bloody jaw-dropping tremendous, that even the most aqua-phobic among us will dive head first into the sea at the first opportunity. No sharks though, we can’t stress that too much, there must definitely be no sharks, and absolutely no moray eels hiding in crevices. So no remakes of Jaws, The Deep, Open Water, Deep Blue Sea, or any of these films that Diver Magazine (the North American Publication) calls the best diving movies of all time.

Mark, it seems, has a very different opinion about what makes a film engaging or exciting from the rest of us and we suspect doesn’t understand that Hollywood makes films in order to make money, not to support the diving industry but that aside, there is a fundamental problem with such an appeal – it requires someone else to do something! That’s not particularly pioneering Mark!

The old version of GoPro lacked portability

Can you imagine Lotte and Hans or Jacques or Valerie or Ron or even Monty Halls (and no we still don’t know who he is) sitting around and wondering when someone else is going to film all the stuff they were doing? No of course you can’t, pioneers don’t wait for other people to do things they get on with it, that’s what being a pioneer is all about and a quick perusal of the list in the Women Divers Hall of Fame, shows that there seems to be a great deal of women doing exactly that.

So what’s going on here? Diving has had it’s pioneers, it has had it’s movies so why does Mark Evans think that the it still needs someone of high calibre to bring the sport to a whole new audience? Then we thought about our own early diving experiences and why we prefer snorkelling and we had an answer. It’s all down to Brad.

You see our sport has many advantages over diving. You don’t need a lot of expensive equipment. You don’t need to join PADI or BSAC. You don’t need to know how to correctly spell Cousteau and more importantly, and this is the crux of the matter, you don’t have to spend time with Brad. 

The diving world is full of Brads; you meet them in every dive shop, every dive operation and dive club around the world. Brad of course comes in different shapes and sizes but the Brad species all have one thing in common – he has an unbelievably over-inflated opinion of himself. You would think that you might be able to avoid an encounter with Brad but you would be wrong. The diving world it seems, insists that anyone’s first foray into the sport must begin with a meeting with Brad. Yep, Brad is your diving instructor and he is adamant that he is going to make you look a complete berk while he teaches you the basics of diving in a hotel swimming pool. Of course Brad doesn’t normally teach people to dive, as he will explain ad nauseam. Brad’s real job (the one he’s taking a break from in order to train you hapless tourists ‘not to kill yourself out there’ in the deep blue) is a fighter pilot or a Navy commando or mine clearance expert or, and this is becoming more prevalent in Braddy world, a Green peace defender of the earth. Yep Brad is taking a year off from all the stress of being a Top Gun, storming beaches, disarming mines with toothpicks and smuggling whales out of Japan in his board shorts, just to make sure you know the difference between a fin and a flipper. Flipper is a dolphin according to Brad. According to the rest of the world, Flipper is a fictional character in a TV series portrayed by a variety of Cetaceans’ or those things that you put on your feet that helps propel you through the water. Brad is the antithesis of all that Mark Evans wants. Far from being engaging, charismatic, exciting and likeable; Brad is annoying, obnoxious and soooooo boring that most people who encounter him and his egocentric ilk are deterred from ever getting involved in diving again. So Mark Evans is wrong when he laments the lack of modern diving heroes. You see, the real legacy of Lotte Haas and the legends of her time is that diving no longer needs a modern hero or a Hollywood blockbuster to bring the sport to the masses – that’s already been done! What the sport of diving needs is to stop Brad and his gormless, mind-numbingly dull brethren ruining that legacy for millions.

An afterthought. Several beers later, we suddenly realised that there are no real snorkelling heroes – apart from The Dangerous Snorkelling Club of course. Then we found this picture of Top Gear presenter Jeremy Clarkson. He may be fat, have bad teeth and be offensive to Argentinians and Mexicans but we’d rather have a beer with him than Brad. Cheers Jezza and very a big cheers to you Lotte – the underwater world, has indeed, lost a heroine.

 

Who are you looking at Brad?