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Well, I surf since I’m 5 yrs old and all this time the sea has given me a lot. Lot of joy, friends… has taught me a lot.
And, nowadays I’m in a project giving back a pebble of sand to the sea, trying to heal in some way the plastic in our coasts.
Let me tell you when I realized that the plastic was an issue in the sea. Some time ago when I was in Montanita (surf spot) I was riding a wave and suddenly trying to make a roll, I fell from it.
After the wipe out, I got my board and I saw that on the fins there was a plastic bag tangled on them. So, that day I decided to make an exercise.
I was going to pick up all the plastic that I found in my surfing session of that day. A typically surf session can last two to three hours average.
To be clearer, this is Montanita and you have to catch the wave over here. You have to ride the wave to the right direction.
That day it was possible to ride about 40 to 50 meters. Then you have to return back on the same path and reach the point to catch another wave.
Frequently, on the beach spots with waves, the sea takes all the garbage and leaves it on the shore.
However, that day I could only catch just four more waves because on those four times
I picked up plastic trash and my pocket and my hands were full of it. So I had to get out of the water.
That’s how I truly realized that the sea is affected with plastic.
I remembered that when I was I kid, I used to get into the sea and there was a lot of shells in the sand. Now, there is a lot of shells and lot of plastic too.
And that’s what is happening to the albatross in the Pacific Ocean. They see these plastics and they think that it’s food, so they pick it up and they feed their babies with it.
These baby albatross eat it and fill their stomachs. Because they can't digest it, they reject any real food they're given and die of hunger.
These pictures were taken in an island in the Pacific Ocean, the albatross were found with plastic inside them.
On another hand, in the Pacific Ocean the plastic debris is joining in certain places and they are forming an island that is bigger in size than Texas.
Just in the United States, one thousand bottles are thrown away every second.
It is obvious that there are more people making trash than people clean.
People who are cleaning, are doing it by the statement which is “let’s leave a better world for our children”. That is what they propose.
We prefer another phrase that has some logic: “Let’s leave better children to our world”.
So we think about it but we ask ourselves: how can we leave better children to our world with the objective to reduce plastic pollution?
That’s when we came up with the idea of creating more surfers.
As a surfer I can say that when a person start to surf, it begins a new kind of relationship between the sea and him. Like in harmony. When the sea moves, the surfer moves.
When the sea is calm, the surfer is calm. And when the sea gets sick, the surfer gets sick too. And beyond this harmony, the sea gives you a lot of joy.
Just a little tube on one morning session, just two seconds of it, it can get you stoked the whole week. The sea has something special.
So, the plan was simple. We planned to go to poor beach towns of the coastline and we teach surfing to the kids that lives in front of the sea.
We know that these kids have in their towns the typical soccer field that is barely useful. However in front of them have a great natural surf “field” that is in much better shape than the soccer field.
We thought that on the sea, they can have more fun, be more joyful.
But before executing the plan, we needed to test it. Because we thought that maybe as a surfer we see things in another way and perhaps we could be wrong.
Maybe they don’t see what we already see. So we visited two towns and organized a surf camp in both of them. We said: Let’s teach them how to surf and see if they really get happy or not.
If they realize that in their playground they have an amusement park. In that way we could prove if the idea was valid or not.
This video that I’m going to show you right now, is the recording of one of the two surf camps that we made. This is the first phase of the project.
[video]
In the taping of this video 100 underprivileged children learned to surf
Now all these kids
Will smile when they see waves
In their backyards
Evidently we can assure that surf really gives them joy. So, I’m not that crazy anyway. The kids learn to surf that day for the first time and they were very happy. This was a big event.
Then continue with the project and make it better. And we said, ok, let's visit the communities, when we visited the communities we teach them to surf in land.
This is an event in a community and families are all watching their kids back surf.
They go running to the sea as if they were more desperate than the real surfers that are teaching them.
They stand on the table and with only one try on the table, they begin this relationship with the sea, they begin to fall in love with the sea.
They start to loving it. Even if some of these kids won’t surf again, at least they had a great experience with the sea.
And this experience could help them to be aware of the care that they must take of the ocean because the ocean make them happy once. They have met it.
With this experience in their minds then we gathered them together and start a discussion.
Is over here where we begin to teach them about the ocean pollution where the plastic is one of the biggest problem.
We tell them about the facts and statistics. And we give them the choice to be like “sea guards” because they live in front of them and so they can protect it.
One of the ways is by teaching them how to reuse plastic bottles with some ideas we know like plant pots, seats, mosquitoes traps;
and through these kids, their families can also learn that they can save some money in furniture, in electricity, dooing business, etc.
Plastic has many functions even like boats, and I realized in this picture that it depends on oneself if you choose to transform it in garbage
or you choose to reuse it by transforming it on a child’s toy that can receive affection from a kid.
The responsibility is in us. It is an interesting way of seeing it.
With all these ideas and thoughts, if we take any typical house of the poor beach towns, like Curia where we have been working,
in a little house we use all the inventions showed before, in just one house is possible to reuse 2000 plastic bottles.
So, in a little town of one hundred houses only it is possible to reuse 200.000 plastic bottles.
And what if we begin to do it in all the coast of the country and we choose one hundred beach towns, that would give us 20’000.000 plastic bottles only in one country, Ecuador.
Just using a little number of houses in a small town. What if we do it around the world??
At the moment, with five friends of mine of other countries, we are starting this project and getting activated in all the places we can.
They came to help me with this project over here and each of them is going to do the same in their country.
They are surfing leaders and the interesting part is that by surfing you can travel a lot, so we can extend our network to activate it around the world and make it real.
What we are doing here is creating a message. Our pebble of sand (Granito de Arena) is a message to the world.
And in this next video you will see the whole project and our purpose.
VIDEO
The ocean has given me a lot. It's time to give something back one small pebble of sand .
I've dedicated all my whole life searching for the best waves around the world
it's obvious that plastic bottles are affecting our ocean.
Many organizations are doing something about it, however, there still are plastic bottles everyday in the beaches.
So what happens if we start teaching people we know that live in the coastline that all plastic is not only garbage but it can also be reused,
so that way we could transform everyone in a natural re- cycler of that plastic.
We, as surfers, have a better approach to the coast communities and we can start teaching kids all the way up to adults.
Our work is to show that plastic bottles are not just garbage, that they can be reused. So, we visit beachtowns and organize surf camps.
By surfing, we can show them what it means to love the ocean. Being surfers, they'll begin to care more for the planet and help take out the plastic from the shores.
Some ideas are ours, others have been taken from the internet.
No matter where the idea comes from, what we want to do is to avoid more plastic in the ocean.
With this kind of ideas it is possible to reuse 2000 bottles approximately in each house per year.
So if you do the math, in a town of one hundred houses, it would be 200.000 bottles. Imagine if we could do the same in all the shores all around the world?
We don't want any donations or money, we just people to think and that before they throw it away, just think what you can do with it.
Every action has a reaction.
It's just a small pebble of sand.
If we all got together and put a small pebble of sand we can do it.
So next time think before you throw it away.
Thanks.
Thanks
Just to be more specific, from the beginning of this talk until now, 11 minutes and 38 seconds, only in USA, 698.000 plastic bottles have been thrown away.
The plastic bottle is not the problem, is what we choose to do with it. So, let’s think before we throw it. This is my pebble of sand.
Thanks.