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(Clapping)
Sorry for the language but it will be this one
I will tell you a story,
I've been surfing since age 5.
and during all this time, the sea gave me a lot,
from trophies, trips and free clothes,
to my best friends and a family.
So I feel that's my obligation, in gratitude,
to give back to the sea a small grain of sand,
and I am in a project,
that wants to give back to the sea,
decreasing the amount of plastic on the shores
I will tell you something that happened to me
in Montañita, a surf beach in Ecuador.
One day, I was surfing and performing a maneuver I suddenly fell,
when I turned the board over,
I found a plastic bag between the fins.
So that day, I've decided to do something
in that surfing practice,
I would collect all the plastic material I found during this practice,
that would take 2 or 3 hours.
I will explain what happened, this is Montañita.
And for you to understand how to surf in this place,
you catch the wave and go to the right (in this case),
and you go for about 40 meters, then go back
to surf another wave.
what happened here?
During this practice session
that should have been 3 to 4 hours,
I was only surfing for 20 minutes,
because after catching 4 waves I had my hands and pockets full of plastic
and had to leave the sea.
In a place with waves,
the sea usually sends the garbage back to the beach,
However, this is what happened.
When I was a child, I used to see shells on the sea shore
but today I see shells and plastic
and the same happens with the albatrosses on an island in the Pacific Ocean
the birds see plastic and mistake it for food and give it to their young
The litte birds eat it, but can't digest it,
so they refuse real food offered by their mothers and die of hunger.
This is a photo of a young albatross,
exactly as it was found.
That's how they were found, with plastic inside them.
On the other side,
the ocean is keeping all the trash in one area
and the size of this "trash island" (as it is called)
is twice as much as the size of Texas.
For you to have one idea of how big it is.
In a recent study, it shows that 90% of this island,
that is twice the size of Texas, is made of plastic.
If we believe this affects only the sea, but not us,
take a close look at this figure,
only in one country, the USA.
1,000 plastic bottles are thrown away per second in the USA
This affects us too,
we are eating plastic in fish,
it's the plastic that is thrown in the sea.
Obviously, this happens because there are more people littering
than people cleaning
The people who are cleaning
are doing an excellent job,
and they are working with a motto:
"Let's leave a better world for the kids."
Beautiful motto, it works, but too few people are cleaning.
This made us think about another sentence.
What happens if instead of leaving a better world for the kids,
we leave better kids for the world?
Having this in mind,
we asked ourselves how are we going to leave better kids for world?
with the goal of getting our coasts rid of the plastic,
The answer was easy: make them become surfers!
Why surfers?
Surfing is magic,
when the sea moves,
the surfer moves as well
when the sea is calm,
the surfer is also calm,
when the sea is ill,
the surfer also gets ill
because he is in the sea.
Along with this harmony that you have with the sea,
the sea gives you a lot of happiness.
A tube of 2 seconds in one morning,
can make you happy for a week and even a month!
And if it is 4 seconds,
my biggest tube was of 4 seconds,
I keep talking and happy for that!
So this has an incredible magic,
when you feel so much happiness and get connected to the sea,
there is no other alternative but to like it and take care of it, spontaneously.
So we started a program called "a small grain of sand",
we visited the coasts where the children live,
generally the coasts of Latin America
have scarce financial resources,
and we show them their 'surf field'
is in better condition
than the soccer field, and it does not need maintenance.
everybody can come and participate,
and we believe we can change his life like this.
If a child becomes a surfer and faces the sea,
this person will be happy for the rest of his life,
surfers who live by the sea are happy.
We visit these villages and organize surf camps,
the community gets together,
it is a community event.
We teach them to surf first on the ground,
many of these children cannot swim,
and they are really excited to learn how to surf.
They go running into the sea, obviously,
when they stand on the board,
and it's at that moment that they fall in love with the sea.
This child, even if he ends up moving to the city,
he will never forget that day at the beach
and how the sea made him feel.
The sea made him smile
These children do not smile a lot, it is another reality.
After they have such a good time, we meet them
and tell them that this sea that made them feel so good,
it is not doing well, and we tell them about the plastic statistics..
this causes a great impact on them, but we tell them there is a solution.
we do workshops with them
and teach them how to re-use the plastic,
in plant jars, for instance, in stools,
in mosquitoes traps, and through the kids
the adults see some opportunities,
they can save money on furniture, for example.
instead of buying one, you can make it
They can save energy,
this is the world's most economic light .
It is a skylight, which we put water and chlorine,
to get the focus light of world's cheapest energy.
Lots of things can be made with plastic
just searching the Internet.
There are many ideas of things that can be made with plastic,
as the Japanese for example.
This photo made me realize that the plastic is not the problem.
What we do with plastic can be something good or bad.
These people decided to do a toy with the platic.
We question ourselves: will this plastic will turn into garbage
or something to get the love of a child? If I were plastic
I wanted to be a toy, and not in a bin or as trash in the sea.
Taking into consideration these inventions
or others that can be shown to us,
We made a prototype of a small house.
in a small village in Ecuador, for example
we can use 2,000 plastic bottles per house.
what If we use those 2,000 bottles in a community of a hundred houses?
it is still a small community,
we would use 200,000 bottes per community.
What happens if we do that in
a hundred places in Ecuador, it would multiply,
we will be using 20 million bottles in only
100 beach communities in a small country like Ecuador.
what would happen if we do this all over the world?
In order to do this, and this is the real "Small Grain of Sand",
we got together with four other friends.
and these five different countries,
we are sending a message to the world,
the message that you will watch soon.
These 4 friends that are working with me
I've known them forever,
this is interesting about surfing,
we build a network,
they are leaders in their countries, excellent surfers.
The surfing network can be spread all over the world ,
and our "small grain of sand" is the message,
you will watch in this video that explains a liitle bit about the project.
and it will summarize the "small grain of sand" that we want to share with everybody.
The sea gave me a lot,
now it is time to pay it back with a small grain of sand.
I have devoted my life,
to search for the best waves in the world.
it is clear that the plastic bottles
are ruining our oceans.
There are many organizations working on this issue,
but the truth is,
there is more and more plastic on our beaches daily.
So, what would happen
if we, the ones who visit many beach communities,
tell people that these plastic bottles are not garbage
they can be reused
we can change
each person from this community
into somebody who collects and recycles this plastic.
We, as surfers, have direct access
to all these communities who live on the seacoast,
and we can help educate
from the youngest generations up to the oldest ones.
Our job is to show that a plastic bottle
is not something bad and that can be reused
we visit the beach communities and teach the kids how to surf
through the surf we can teach them the love for the sea.
As surfers, they will take start taking care of our planet.
They will collect the plastic from the sea.
Some ideas we create ourselves,
and others we get from the web.
It doesn't matter where the idea comes from,
what we want is to take the plastic bottles out from the sea.
With these inventions we could reuse
up to 2,000 plastic bottles per house,
in a commuity with a hundred houses,
up to 200,000 plastic bottles.
can you imagine if we could do this all over the world?
We don't want donations or money,
we only want you to think before you get rid of the bottle.
Each action has its own consequence,
it is only one small grain of sand,
If we all put a small grain of sand
We can make a difference.
Think before you discard it!
Thank you!
(Applause)
Thank you!
So that is my small grain of sand,
if all of you leave with this phrase:
"Think before you discard it, when you have an empty plastic bottle"
it was worth the effort. Thank you very much.
(Applause)