Ocean Clean Up - Divers Do While Surfer Dudes Don't

The people at Fourth Element have recently launched their Ocean Positive swimwear range. So what you might ask? Well the thing about this particular range is that it is made from recycled fishing nets. These “ghost nets” are abandoned by fisherman after snagging on reefs and wrecks and pose a significant threat to marine life. In short they continue to fish even though abandoned, trapping a staggering variety of marine life and resulting in the loss of thousands upon thousand of creatures each year. They also destroy coral as currents drag them across reefs, literally scrubbing the reef clean. Now however, working with divers around the world, Fourth Element are collecting up these nets and putting them to good use by turning them into snazzy swimwear. The whole range is a bit limited at the moment (the men’s swimwear also looks a little snug for those of us who are more generously sized in the waistline department) but they are surprisingly low priced and the company will soon be releasing rash vests made in the same way. The whole process of turning nets into bikinis is demonstrated below.

Reading about all this recycling, our minds turned to Riz Smith. Do you remember Riz Smith? We do. Riz Smith makes boardshorts and sometime ago he had an aspiration that by 2016 he would be making boardshorts out of ocean plastic. When we first heard about Riz’s desire to create surfers apparel from the plastic garbage that pollutes our oceans we were rather dismissive, in fact we said that Riz’s idea was nothing more than fashion world tokenism that generates sales by playing on middle class guilt. You can read that post here and our follow up post here. Now spurred on by Fourth Element's successful recycling of “ghost nets” we thought it would only be fair if we had a look to see how Riz and his “bottles to boardshorts Journey” was getting on. Back in June someone at Riz’s company called Lou released an update on their website. Yes we know it’s October and the statement was released in June, but to be honest we really haven’t been paying much attention. Anyway before we get started let’s just remind you of those original problems we had with Riz’s plan when we first heard of it. We had concerns over the whole feasibility of making boardshorts out of ocean plastic. How would Riz collect the ocean plastic, who would do the collecting, would they be paid and would that collection have an impact on the mass of plastic floating in the ocean gyres? So let’s see if any of those concerns have been addressed. Here’s the statement:

While it's hard to know exact figures, it is reported up to 8m tonnes of plastics enter the oceans each year. In the UK, we use 15 million plastic bottles per day of which only 50% are recycled. We launched our bottles to boardshorts campaign because we want to encourage customers to recycle but also to show that plastic bottles littering our beaches and oceans can be put to good use. We’ve always talked about the Bottles to Boardshorts project as fitting together pieces of a jigsaw –getting the bottles on beaches to a recycling plant and then linking up the plant with a fabric manufacturer who can then send that fabric to our factory. 

Through our partnership with the Marine Conservation Society, we now know that about 10% of the litter found through beach cleans are plastic bottles.  We need close to 5,000 bottles to make 250 pairs of shorts so we are going to need to collect bottles at more than one beach clean! That’s why we’ve been in discussion with a number of beach cleaning charities and organisations who(sic) work with fishermen to find ways of sorting out plastic bottles and then amalgamating them to send to our recycling plant. Logistics are going to be challenging, as we don’t want to use loads of fuel transporting the bottles from beach to plant. And we’re going to need somewhere to store all those bottles in the short term! 

The reassuring thing we’ve learnt is that it doesn’t seem to matter how dirty or water logged the bottles found on the beaches are – they can still be recycled.  But we do now know we can only use clear Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles to make our shorts which further increases the need to work with a number of beach cleaning organisations to source these.

It’s also been great to start to talk to recycling partners in the UK who can take our beach bottles and transform them into PET pellets or flakes. The bit of the jigsaw we now need to fit together is working out whether the company that currently make our fabric from recycled bottles can use PET flakes made from beach bottles instead. If so, we also need to test whether it can be made from 100% beach bottles or, for quality and durability’s sake, it needs to be made from a combination of beach bottles and standard recycled bottles (i.e the ones you put in your bag at home). 

So, as you can see there are still a lot of questions for us to work on but we feel we are making great progress and learning loads on the way. 

A lot of questions Lou? A lot of questions? Are you serious? Are you telling us that you have only just found out that most of the litter on the beaches is not actually clear PET plastic bottles? Are you also telling us that you still haven’t figured out how to effectively collect, transport and store the plastic bottles. And, and this is really fundamental Lou, are you telling us that you still haven’t figured out whether you can make the fabric from ocean plastic in the first place? There’s another thing Lou, something that has got us confused. Your statement seems to suggest that you are already making fabric from standard recycled bottles, (i.e the ones you put in your bag at home), but as of yet not from ocean plastic. Which begs another question Lou, are you really just planning to make the fabric from standard recycled bottles and using the ocean plastic thing as nothing more than a marketing plan? Are you Lou…? Then there’s another problem. In our original post on the subject we pointed out that beach clean-ups are a good idea but most of the plastic polluting the oceans are not on beaches they’re in the ocean gyres – the ocean gyres Lou! Those great big whirlpools out in the middle of the oceans, and even if the plastic does wash up on the beach Lou we think you’re being a bit optimistic if you think it’s going to be on the single beach you’re planning to clean up.

Now we know that there are people out there in the big wide world who aren’t as cynical as us and will say that although Riz’s journey has, so far, been a little disappointing but at least he is trying to do something. To those people we would say, you probably aren’t one of the many people who gave Riz over £16,000 via crowdfunding in order to get the journey off and running in the first place. If you are one of those crowdfunders we would say, what are you doing? Why are you donating money to an established commercial company in order for that company to research the commercial viability of bringing a product to market? Still you probably got a t-shirt for the effort. Okay, maybe we are being a bit hard here. Maybe Riz and Lou just need more time. After all if they can make ocean plastic into boardshorts, even very expensive ones, that would be a good idea right? And maybe this isn’t just fashion world tokenism or a cynical marketing ploy. Maybe Riz needs to stop telling us about his aspiration and actually get busy turning that aspiration into reality. In which case we have a suggestion for Riz and Lou. Go and have a chat with the chaps at Fourth Element because they seem to have got this “waste material to commercial product” idea well and truly nailed. If you do that Riz, if you have a chat Lou, we think you might find out that it is better to make the product first and then market it. Rather than market it, and then try to work out if you can actually make it. In short Riz it’s the difference between simply aspiring and actually doing!

Boredom, Despair And Numb Buttocks. It Must Be World Oceans Day!

June 8^th was World Oceans Day. You didn’t notice? Well that’s not surprising considering the bright sparks who organised this global invent decided that it should be held, of all days, on a Monday. There were apparently lots of events held around the world, but you almost certainly didn’t notice those either as you were probably working. Even the media coverage of the event seemed lacklustre at best. Despite being a Monday and the general sense of apathy, we decided that since we are always going on about marine conservation, that a few of us should go along to the event held at The Royal Geographical Society in Kensington, London. “Realising the potential of our oceans and coasts” was billed as chance for the public to hear and discuss how governments, communities and the private sector can respond to the challenges of pollution, overfishing, climate change and habitat destruction and how many of the benefits and opportunities provided by oceans and coasts are being missed or lost. 

 

The event was jointly organised by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), The Prince’s Charities’ International Sustainability Unit, University College London (UCL) and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). At 6:30 in the evening we were guided into the lecture theatre, complimentary reading matter in hand and took our seats. Some fifteen minutes later, backsides feeling a little numb from the ridiculously uncomfortable bench seating, our host introduced himself. Unfortunately we were so engrossed in discussing the disturbed mind that could have created such torturous seating that we missed his name, but he was a well-dressed gentleman with a perfect coiffure of grey hair and the slight air of a car salesmen. He gave us a quick run down of the evening’s timetable. There would be a few short presentations followed by a high level question and answer session with a select panel. He then introduced a video message from H.R.H the Prince of Wales no less. His Royal Highness apologised for not being able to attend in person – he probably had something better to do. H.R.H. mentioned the challenges the oceans face and the fact that he was launching a photography competition to celebrate the importance of our blue planet. The winning images would be featured in a special exhibition in Malta in November this year. Why the exhibition was being held in Malta wasn’t explained. Perhaps the staff of his International Sustainability Unit didn’t fancy the notorious cold of a November in London - a little tip to the sun anyone? H.R.H. then informed us that he had been assured that we were all in for an exciting evening, though he didn’t sound too convinced, and as the numbness began to travel down our legs, nor did we. 

The coiffure of grey hair then introduced His Excellency Kamalesh Sharma, Secretary-General of the Commonwealth. Mr Sharma is an amiable man with extensive diplomatic experience and well-known interests in the empowerment of young people, women’s rights and the eradication of poverty.  Unfortunately what he didn’t seem to be interested in was making sure his microphone was working – it wasn’t. What followed was a twenty-minute mumble. Occasionally we picked up the odd word here and there such as “economic functionaries” (whatever they are) or global warming (climate change Kamalesh, climate change! We don’t say global warming anymore) but along with the rest of the audience we were too polite to demand that this heavyweight of global politics should speak up. Thus, none the wiser about what he had been saying, we joined in the courteous applause as he left the stage and the building. He probably had something better to do as well.

By the time the next speaker was introduced, the numbness in our lower extremities was becoming a serious concern, and a few audience members had made a bolt for the door. No one it seemed, wanted to hang around for the Q&A – did they know something we didn’t? 

John Tanzer, a rotund Australian and Marine Director of the WWF, bounded onto the stage with vigour and thankfully, a fully functional microphone. How do you get to be a Marine Director of WWF and how much does it pay? Are just some of the things we really we wanted to know. Mr Tanzer though didn’t want to tell us. Instead he talked about the WWF report called: Reviving The Ocean Economy. He talked about NGO’s and lamented that the WWF sometimes doesn’t get invited to the meetings where real decisions are made. Sometimes, he told us sadly, he feels irrelevant.  Later, he showed us a slide of a bemused looking girl from Mozambique; the same girl appears in the WWF report. Mr Tanzer didn’t explain too much about the girl other than to say she illustrated his point. What that point was we weren’t sure, but we did wonder why the poor girl looked so bemused. Was it because she had just had a camera shoved in her face? Then we wondered if she had received any money for having her image used in the WWF report or even if there were any legal requirements about such images. Can anyone use your image in publications without your agreement or do they have to pay? Perhaps she had agreed. Perhaps someone else had agreed for her?  Perhaps that was why she was bemused? Anyway we agreed we didn’t know and turned our attentions back to Mr Tanzer, who was talking about himself, though not about his earnings. Mr Tanzer informed us that he had dabbled in politics and it showed, he is a good performer and self-promotion appears not to be one of his weaknesses but did we get any real sense of what the Marine Director of the WWF actually does, or what the report is all about? Sadly no. 

The sound of a gentle snore emanated from the back seats, and a few more members of the audience made a dash for freedom as the next speaker was introduced, the one and only Ben Miller. Our ears pricked up, our stone-cold buttocks suddenly warmed a little. Ben Miller, the comedian? Sadly we had misheard, it wasn’t the amusing Ben Miller but the academic Ben Milligan. Mr Milligan is a Senior Research Associate at UCL (how much does that pay?) and despite not wearing a tie and having the sort of trendy classes you might associate with a socialist comedian he was not remotely interested in making us laugh. Ben thanked John Tanzer for his very personal view (did we detect a hint of condescension in his voice?) before turning his attention to the audience. He talked about marine protection, marine management and marine investment. He mentioned carbon credits and blue bonds though oddly, nothing was said about over population. Ben then showed us some slides, which like Mr Tanzer before, he too insisted clearly illustrated his points, but again we weren’t too sure. Clear explanation didn’t seem to be the point of these little presentations. Perhaps the speakers didn’t have enough time or perhaps they didn’t think we, the general public, would understand or perhaps they really didn’t care. Ben continued his talk. He showed some more slides and talked about natural flood barriers in Florida and told us all that he really was hopeful for the future – perhaps he’s secured some more funding or maybe he too had something better to do afterwards. Ben finished his time on stage by asking a question: What do we do now? At least that’s what we think he asked. The buttock inducing numbness of the seats might have finally reached our ears or perhaps the bleakness of the evening had fuddled our senses but we were sure that was the question. We didn’t know about the rest of the audience, but we knew exactly what we were going to do. Before the select panel had taken their seats for the question and answer session we were off. Enough really was enough. We needed to restore the circulation to our lower limbs and some spark to our minds. 

At a local hostelry, a cold beer in hand, we reflected on the evening. Perhaps the question and answer had turned into a whirlwind of intelligent debate. Perhaps the audience had thrown up some intriguing ideas or asked some searching questions. We didn’t know. What we did know was that this event was supposed to have been organised so that the academics, professional charities and conservation heavy hitters could engage with the public, to explain the challenges and the opportunities. And more importantly, tell us what they actually all do. In essence this was their chance to inspire. On that front unfortunately, it was a hapless failure. All we felt was abject despair. We felt disengaged, uninspired and we now knew how poor John Tanzer felt when he and the WWF don’t get invited to those really, really important meetings. We felt irrelevant.

Of course we should not have been surprised at this, In fact we really should have known better. The number of conservation organisations, charities, sustainability units, NGO’s, committees, projects and funds are increasing at a bewildering rate. Conservation has become big business and this event was the industry giving us the old sales pitch. Yesterday it was the rain forest, the day before polar bears, and the day before that it was global warming. Today however it is the oceans and the great conservation gravy train rolls on.

The coiffure of grey hair had stated that he wanted us, the audience, to spread the word via twitter and social media. And that message was that we should all support the WWF, IIED, NGO’s, professional academics, bureaucrats and the hordes of charity directors, managers and sustainability officers out there. They need our help, our social media sites and our donations. In fact, we were bit surprised that a collection plate wasn’t passed around between speakers – give generously please.

So what are we to finally make of this event? Well clearly there is a business opportunity for furniture manufacturers to supply more comfortable seats to the Royal Geographical Society and audio recordings of the presentation could be marketed as a cure for insomnia.  As for raising the awareness of marine conservation and discussing possible solutions to the challenges, we have to award the event and its organisers a gold plated zero! We must also sound a warning here. The field of conservation really is in danger of becoming a perverse piece of theatre. The players, all those NGO’s, academics and sustainability units will prance about the world stage holding discussions, lobbying governments, formulating policy documents, making decisions and raising revenue, whilst the rest of us will be reduced to the role of an audience. Silently watching on, possibly bored witless but nevertheless, totally irrelevant to the drama playing out. The great conservation show and its industry players appear more and more to be self-serving, self perpetuating and increasingly self-important. And that must stop.

Perhaps though there is a silver lining to the clouds of despair. Milligan, Sharma, Tanzer and the World Oceans Day industry might not have inspired us but they have done something else. Disengaged and uninspired we may be but more importantly we are disgruntled. So in the coming weeks, months and years we will be paying close attention to work of the WWF and it’s publications along with the IIED and all the rest, and we are rather certain that we will not be a very compliant audience

One last thing, if any of you out there think that if we had paid more attention to what was said and less time worrying about our numb backsides, we might have learnt something. Then we can only respond in the words of disgruntled Vietnam Veterans everywhere: “You don’t know man… You weren’t there!”

A PDF of the WWF “Reviving the ocean economy” can be found here.

No Peace For The Wicked From This Man’s Green Organisation

The oceans are under assault. Plastic waste, chemicals, effluent and industrial pollution threatens to suffocate the life out of the marine environment. Over fishing by floating factories is decimating fish stocks and through the problem of by-catch; dolphins, turtles, seabirds and a host of other species are being killed in the nets. Sharks, the supposed super predators of the ocean, are having their dorsal fins mercilessly hacked from their bodies and then thrown back into the sea to drown in order to supply a nutritionally useless soup to the restaurant tables of China and South East Asia on a scale that beggars belief. Illegal fishing is rampant throughout the ocean threatening extinction for some species and Whalers from Japan and Norway still ply their trade unencumbered by the anger of people across the world. Many people are concerned about these outrages and insist that something must be done, but what exactly. Well, some say we should all gather together with painted placards and protest outside embassies and national parliaments. Others suggest legal solutions should be pursued through the courts and international organisations like the United Nations. Others still, insist that we should all look to get involved personally and organise things like beach clean ups or buy recycled boardshorts or hold candlelight vigils for haddock. And others still, suggest that scientific solutions should be investigated without delay, as only science can stop the ensuing environmental massacre. 

Such activities have their place in the environmental activists tool kit but let’s face it; demonstrating, holding prayer meetings or hiring a bunch of snazzy dressed lawyers rarely achieves much. As for scientific solutions, well they might work for pollution but what scientific breakthrough is going to stop a harpoon smacking into a whales flesh or make a rich Chinese bloke turn his nose up at his shark’s fin soup. Faced with such an onslaught; protests, boycotts, church raffles and decade long law suits become nothing more than self righteous “ middle class” smoke that actually obscures the damage that has and is still being done. What’s needed is something far more meaningful and far more dangerous than many of us would contemplate, something that many legal minds would call piracy. Enter stage right, radical defender of the seas, troublemaker and self-confessed pirate Paul Watson, co-founder of Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.

Paul Watson, who likes to be called Capt. Paul Watson, (wow what an ego) was a founding member of Greenpeace but disagreed with the way the organisation was heading and was ousted from the organisation in 1977. Soon after he co-founded the Sea Shepherd Society. The Society’s mission was to take the fight direct to those who were committing the offending acts that so many environmentalists complain about but yet do nothing themselves to stop. He successfully led campaigns against the seal hunting trade, exposed the massacre of dolphins in Taiji and in the 1990’s used his ship to ram and sink twelve Japanese whalers. Sea Shepherd still undertakes annual operations against whaling activities in the Antarctica. There are those, including the Greenpeace Foundation, who condemn Watson and Sea Shepherd, calling them violent, but Watson is unrepentant.

“Pirates get things done without bureaucratic red tape… Yes, we be proud pirates, however we are disciplined pirates with our own special code of honour. That code demands that we do not cause injury or death to our enemies… We operate within the framework of international conservation law meaning that we only oppose unlawful exploitation of marine life… We do not target legitimate operations, even if we disagree with them. We are not a protest organisation, we don’t hang banners, we intervene against illegalities.” 

Watson cites the United Nations World Charter for Conservation, which he says, allows for nongovernmental organisations to intervene in order to uphold international law. “We have been called vigilantes. And indeed, we are vigilantes, because when the law exists but enforcement does not, a vacuum is created that allows for the actions of vigilantism…” 

The activities of Sea Shepherd have not just invoked commendation from what Watson calls the green crowd of protestors, banner wavers and lobbyists. The Japanese government is a particularly fervent critic as are other governments and global companies who have labelled Watson and Sea Shepherd as eco-terrorists. Watson’s activities have led to more than a few brushes with the law too. In 2002, after being invited to lead a fight against over-fishing by the Costa Rican Government, Watson boarded a vessel suspected of illegal fishing and escorted it to harbour. On arrival however, it was the Sea Shepherd crew that were arrested. Many believe that the crew of the fishing vessel had friends in high places. Fearing an unfair trial – being self professed pirates probably wouldn’t have helped - Watson and his crew fled. Watson was arrested ten years later in Frankfurt in relation to the Costa Rica incident, but skipped bail before he could be extradited. He therefore appears to remain a wanted man yet seems unfazed about court action against him in the US and other jurisdictions, and the more whalers, sealers and illegal fisherman rail against him the more he believes he’s winning.

“The more enemies we recruit from that crowd of ecological criminals, the more successful and credible we become.”

And successful they have become, Sea Shepherds activities and adventures are posted all over the web, they’ve had their own television series called Whale Wars and have stopped the issue of whaling from falling off the more mainstream environmental agenda. In 1998 they even planned to use a submarine in their actions against whalers, an idea that prompted the Canadian Navy to rebuke the organisation publicly by saying: “no one at Sea Shepherd know anything about operating a submarine and it is ridiculous for Sea Shepherd to acquire one.”

It was rebuke that Paul Watson savaged with buccaneering style by replying: “Since World War II, the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society has boarded more ships, rammed more ships, engaged in more high seas confrontations and sunk more ships than the Canadian Navy. They are hardly in a position to presume to judge what we are competent or capable of doing.”

No one apart from the Japanese and Norwegians seem to think that whaling is acceptable and the slaughter of dolphins in Taiji, Japan, is as pointless as it is sickening. So whether you agree or not with Paul Watson and his Society’s methods there is no doubt that he has shown a courage and commitment that few of his fellow environmentalists have. In truth while illegal fishing is rampant, whilst the Japanese still pretend that slaughtering whales on mass is necessary for scientific research (seriously how many whales do you have to kill before you work out what a whale is?) and Sharks are killed in their millions for their fins whilst all the while the United Nations, national navies and law enforcement agencies the world over sit by and do nothing, we need Paul Watson. We need the volunteers of Sea Shepherd and thousands more like them.

Some of you out there may be content to paint catchy slogans on placards and hang banners from bridges. You might even prefer to hold a jumble sale or hold an all night candlelight vigil in the hope that such demonstrations might prick the conscience of hardened whalers or stop illegal fishing. We however are slapping on the eye patches and raising our frothing glasses in salute to Paul Watson and all the souls in Sea Shepherd. Hoist the Jolly Roger me hearties  Argggh!

More information on Sea Shepherd is readily available on the web. However we’ve added some pertinent links below. You can sponsor Sea Shepherd directly via their website click here. The more adventurous amongst you might even want to volunteer for active service in one of their many operations or simply help out in their onshore activities if so click here.

The Taiji dolphin slaughter video – caution graphic content

Whale Wars on Youtube

Sea Shepherd in Paul Watson’s own words

Clean Up The Oceans – We’re Going To Need A Bigger Pair Of Boardshorts Riz!

Some time ago we wrote a piece on “Gentleman Surfer” and Designer Riz Smith and his idea of turning ocean plastic into boardshorts (click here for that post). At the time we thought that Riz’s idea, although probably well intentioned, was a bit gimmicky and unlikely to have much, if any effect on the billions of kilos of plastic that are dumped into the ocean annually. Now however, after doing a bit more research into the issue of garbage entering the marine environment, we think that Riz’s idea is not just gimmicky, it’s impact on the problem will literally be a drop in the ocean. In fact it will be a drop in a billion oceans. According to the United Nations Environment Programme, 6.5 billion Kilos of plastic waste gets dumped into the oceans every year. 80% of which comes from inland sources. Some of this waste is swept up by the currents and concentrated into great whirlpools of plastic. The most well known concentration, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, has become so large that it has been nicknamed “The Plastic Continent”. Not all plastic though, bobs about on the ocean waiting for Riz to pluck it up and mutate it into a pair of snazzy shorts (yours for just £80 or thereabouts), 70% eventually sinks to the bottom where it accumulates to create the marine equivalent of a 1960’s chintzy carpet. This no doubt horrifies the more fashionable of the fishes but more importantly it prevents exchanges between water and sediment and thus before you can shout “boardshorts, boardshorts, get your boardshorts, two for 120”, the entire environment is suffocated to death and ocean biodiversity takes another blow to its chin.

Plastic is not the only problem either. Every year thousand of tonnes of chemical pollutants enter the oceans. Some come from the disposal of everyday items such as detergents, paint, cosmetics, medicines etc. Others, such as hydrocarbons, mercury, lead and various acids come from industrial processes. Then there is the contamination by human sewage and animal waste. For instance around 80% of wastewater in developing world is dumped untreated into the ocean, even in the more developed world, sewage treatment plants don’t always prevent contaminants, pathogens and the foul smelling stuff from reaching the oceans. This not only has a devastating affect on the marine environment it presents a direct threat to human health.  

Then there is the problem of agricultural waste. Intensive farming and the over use of nitrogenous fertilisers has led to a problem know as eutrophication. No, we didn’t know what it meant either and had to look it up. Eutrophication, for those of you who aren’t scientists and therefore not used to just making words up, is defined by the US Geological Survey as: “The process by which a body of water acquires a high concentration of nutrients, especially phosphates and nitrates. These typically promote excessive growth of algae. As the algae die and decompose, high levels of organic matter and the decomposing organisms deplete the water of available oxygen, causing the death of other organisms, such as fish. Eutrophication is a natural, slow-ageing process for a water body, but human activity greatly speeds up the process.”

In other words, the pollution of coastal waters with nitrogen based fertilisers leads to explosive blooms of algae, which when they die and decompose, depletes the available oxygen and once again the marine environment is suffocated creating hypoxic or dead zones. There are now an estimated 400 such dead zones around the world. One of the largest is in the Gulf of Mexico, where the Mississippi enters the ocean.

So let’s face it Riz, selling recycled plastic boardshorts might get you into the pages of the Guardian and one or two other newspapers, but it’s going to do nothing to stop the environmental catastrophe going on in our oceans. So what can be done? Well as we have mentioned in our original post you can give your support to a myriad organisations attempting to do something practical about the problem. For instance there’s the Great Ocean Clean Up Project, The Marine Conservation Society and Project Aware amongst many others. All of who are doing great things. There is also the Let’s Do It Mediterranean Project (LIDM). On May 9^th 2015, Civic activists from around the Mediterranean will get together for an organised assault on the huge amount of waste and litter that plagues the region. LIDM is supported by the United Nations Environment Programme and has been doing amazing things since 2007. So get up, get involved and if you can’t, at least spread the word.

In truth though and despite the great efforts of the organisations mentioned and their supporters (that means you), real change will only come when there is a revolution in people’s daily habits. We live in a throw away culture and that needs to change pretty damn sharpish. So having had a bit of a ponder about the issue, we think we’ve hit on an idea that might help and you won’t have to buy a single pair of boardshorts. Besides being careful about how you dispose of things like not pouring paint down the drain or flushing cotton buds down the pan (seriously! Stop that) you can do something very, very simple. You can stop buying bottled water! OK we know that if you’re travelling to the more tropical, disease infested, parts of the world, drinking bottled water is your only option. Even in parts of the Mediterranean the water treatment process leaves a lot to be desired and so again bottled water is a good idea but here in the UK? In France? In Germany? Do you really need to buy gallons of plastic encased H2O?  In the UK for instance, the water that comes from the tap is not only clean and safe it tastes no different than the most expensive bottled stuff you can buy. Think about it, all you need to do is buy a simple reusable flask or bottle, fill it up from the tap and you have clean, hydrating water wherever you go. In one single change, we could clear the supermarket shelves of all those utterly unnecessary plastic containers. We could also end the wretched travesty of waiters in over-priced restaurants trying to sell you water for £20 a bottle because it’s been filtered through volcanic rock. It really is that simple. So wherever you are in the UK, when someone tries to sell you over-priced, over-blown and quite unnecessary bottled water, think of the environment, think of your hard-earned cash, think of how pathetic all that expensive advertising about naturally filtered water is and then in a clear, proud voice retort: “No thanks mate! Make mine tap!

And as we have mentioned before, if you see someone throwing a plastic bottle in the sea - chuck them in after it!

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