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Tuesday 24 March 2015

Surfers Against Sewage: beach-cleaning at Sidmouth >>> Sunday 29th March >>> 11am - 2pm

This coming weekend, there will be several beach-cleaning sessions going on along our coasts:



Events | Surfers Against Sewage

The campaign

Surfers Against Sewage is calling for individuals, communities and businesses to support and participate in activities to protect the coastline from marine litter including beach cleans and education events.

Surfers Against Sewage aims to mobilise between 10,000 – 12,000 community volunteers in 2015 across our community beach cleans, campaign activities and other outside events.

The charity’s vision is to build its grassroots volunteering capacity to engage, train and mobilise a network of up to 25,000 community beach clean volunteers by 2020. As part of this target, by 2020, Surfers Against Sewage aims to deliver 1,000 beaches cleans and implement 5,000 beach litter surveys annually as part of our on-going marine litter campaign commitments.

Each year, through projects such as our Big Spring Beach Clean, Barefoot Wine Beach Rescue Project , Autumn Beach Clean Series, Volunteer Led Beach Cleans, SAS organises hundreds of beach cleans and mobilises many thousands of volunteers, removing many tonnes of this harmful marine litter. In 2014 alone over 9715 people volunteered at 335 SAS beach cleans removing almost 60 TONNES!



We’re proud of this but with your help we can, and must, do much more. In a year where we begin to deliver on our vision to reduce litter on UK beaches by 50% by 2020, SAS need your help more than ever before. Therefore we are encouraging all UK beach lovers to join the SAS Beach Clean programme and organise community beach cleans at your favourite beaches in 2015.

SAS exists to protect the UK’s oceans, waves and beaches for everyone to enjoy safely and sustainably. Those of you who volunteer your time to help us achieve this are priceless and we can’t wait to hear about your SAS beach cleans.

For all beach clean enquiries contact SAS Campaigns and Education Manager Dom Ferris at dom@sas.org.uk or call 01872 555953.

Community Volunteer Engagement and Beach Cleans | Surfers Against Sewage

Thanks to the Herald for highlighting the event:


Green groups call on beach-lovers for help

24 March 2015


Surfers Against Sewage held a litter pick last year. Area representative, Ross Curwen with helpers Jemma Starmore and Mike Newton with some of the waste collected from the beach. Ref shs 7352-43-14AW. Picture: Alex Walton


A quartet of green organisations is calling on 5,000 beach-lovers to clean shores in Sidmouth and around the South West.

Surfers Against Sewage, World Animal Protection, Vita Coco and Protect Direct have teamed up for their biggest ever Big Spring Beach Clean next weekend (March 27 to 29).

They are calling on the public to roll up their sleeves and tackle this ‘tideline of trash’ as they work to slash UK beach litter by 50 per cent by 2020.

Surfers Against Sewage project manager Dom Ferris said: “Each year we are blown away by the commitment and passion of our coastal communities.

“This year we can and will draw a line in the sand in the battle against marine litter.”

Volunteers will be kitted out with heavy duty bags and biodegradable bin bags for litter-picking in Sidmouth from 11am to 2pm next Sunday (March 29).

They will also be out in force in Beer from the same times next Saturday (March 28).

Visit www.sas.org.uk for more information.

Green groups call on beach-lovers for help - News - Sidmouth Herald

The Avaaz campaign group has drawn attention to the devastation at sea:

Save our Oceans



When seasoned sailor Ivan Macfadyen returned from his last Pacific crossing he raised an ominous alarm:

"I'm used to seeing turtles, dolphins, sharks and big flurries of feeding birds. But this time, for 3000 nautical miles there was nothing alive to be seen.”

This once vibrant expanse of sea was hauntingly quiet, and covered with trash.

Experts are calling it the silent collapse. Although very few of us see it, we are causing it -- overfishing, climate change, acidification, and pollution are devastating our oceans and wiping out entire species. It’s not just the annihilation of millennia of wonder and beauty, it impacts our climate and all life on Earth.

But we have a fleeting window still to act and 2015 could be the year to turn the tide -- the UN is considering an initiative to stop dumping and pillaging in the high seas, and the UK just announced that they will create the largest single marine reserve ever in one of the most pristine areas on earth!

Lack of political will is the only real obstacle to getting more of these agreements moving. But creating massive public pressure to force political will is what our community is best at.

Avaaz has already helped win two of the biggest marine protected areas in the world. If enough of us pitch in now, we’ll ramp up our oceans campaigning to pull this crisis back from the brink, and save our precious oceans from silent collapse.

Ivan’s account of his apocalyptic voyage is a clarion call to action. Let’s get started right away.

This is us vs. the polluters, fishing empires, and agribusiness. Right now, fishing boats are scraping the ocean floor clean, and over 80% of sea pollution is coming from fertilisers, pesticides, and plastics pouring off land. The reports are dire: in less than 50 years, our oceans could be completely fished-out. In 100 years, all coral reefs might be dead.

But just as wilderness parks work to rehabilitate life on land, the same happens in the ocean. If our governments create big enough marine reserves and enforce protection laws, the ocean can regenerate.

If we pledge enough now we could win a network of marine sanctuaries in the Pacific, Antarctic, and the Atlantic; challenge illegal fishing and agribusiness where they are ravaging pristine natural regions; and go after a legally binding high seas agreement at the UN so 64% of the ocean’s surface will be protected!

Famed ocean explorer Jacques Cousteau said: “people protect what they love.” Let’s pitch in and inspire millions more people to fall in the love with the ocean and defend its treasures.

We are in a precarious moment when there are still fewer marine mammal extinctions than there are on land, and when ocean ecosystems have shrunk less than those on land. We have not yet passed the tipping point for our oceans, but we will if we don’t act soon and at a scale that rivals the enormity of the problem. There is no other community in the world that can do that like we can.

More Information:

Ocean Life Faces Mass Extinction, Broad Study Says. (New York Times)
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/16/science/earth/study-raises-alarm-for-health-of-ocean-life.html?_r=0

Conservationists call for UK to create world's largest marine reserve (Guardian)
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/feb/10/conservationists-call-for-uk-to-create-worlds-largest-marine-reserve

U.N. moves toward ocean biodiversity treaty (AFP)
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2015/01/25/world/science-health-world/u-n-moves-toward-ocean-biodiversity-treaty/#.VPlOOmR4q-B

The ocean is broken (Newcastle Herald)
http://www.theherald.com.au/story/1848433/the-ocean-is-broken/--this/


Avaaz - Save our Oceans
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