https://reasonstobecheerful.world/clean-ocean-sailing-plastic-pollution/
"“We are fishing for marine plastic under sail,” says Steve Green, of Clean
Ocean Sailing (COS). From their roving, rabble-rousing home and headquarters on
the Annette, a 115-year-old sailing boat, Green and his co-captain, Monika
Hertlová, are leading a naval attack on the plastic polluting our oceans —
which weighs in at an estimated total between 75 million and 199 million tons.
Based on the coast of Cornwall in the UK, COS launched in 2017 after Green
visited an island in the nearby Isles of Scilly archipelago. He was shocked at
the amount of plastic pollution he saw.
“It’s only a mile across, and on the southwest of the island it is six foot
deep of all sorts of plastic flotsam and jetsam. It’s full of dead or dying
seabirds and dolphins,” says Green, who is “pirate-in-chief” at COS. He decided
to do something about the problem and invited other concerned locals to join
him in the mission to remove plastic waste from the most inaccessible parts of
Cornwall’s commanding coastline. Since then, over 400 volunteers have leapt
aboard to join the fixed crew of Green, Hertlová, four-year-old Simon and
Labrador Rosie to sail under the Jolly Roger that flies at “Annie’s” prow.
The 60-ton former Dutch icebreaker acts as a mobile basecamp, sailing the high
seas before pulling into rocky coves and river mouths so that a flotilla of
smaller kayaks and rowing boats can disembark. The smaller vessels are able to
reach shorelines that are difficult to access by land and that are some of the
areas worst affected by plastic pollution. Plus, by using non-motorized
vessels, they avoid burning carbon-emitting fossil fuels.
The group has recorded and removed 500,000 individual pieces of plastic with a
combined weight of over 70 tons. Green says that about 85 percent of the
rubbish they gather is recycled and repurposed. The Ocean Recovery Project in
Exeter upcycles some into sea kayaks that COS then uses to remove more rubbish
from nature."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
