“It Starts With Us!”

“I believe the ocean can be saved and it starts with us!” – Ghislaine Bovy

I believe the ocean can be saved and it starts with us! Large organizations such as Greenpeace and Sea Shepherd have a major role to play in spreading the news but local initiatives such as Clean The Beach Boot Camp are key to ocean protection because it all starts at a “small” level then it grows with the people and the local community.

It’s a great pleasure for me to be one of the team members of the Clean The Beach Boot Camp community here in Phuket where I’ve been living for nearly two years now. They just posted my profile:

Here I support and join this bi-monthly activity of working out then clean a beach right here on this beautiful island where I live all year now. When I started last year, I just wanted to be part of the activities, enjoying myself staying fit and making myself “useful” to the environment but now, I want to do more to promote it because this concept can serve as an example. Linking fitness and cleaning the beach is a perfect scenario since people who enjoy early work out everywhere would rather do it on a clean beach, right? So, for the founder, giving a free work out session in exchange for cleaning the beach was the best combinaison for locals, expats and tourists alike.

As the number of participants grew as well as the coverage in the media, we decided to bring the Clean The Beach Boot Camp to the next level, getting involved in larger events such as the SUP festival, getting resorts to sponsor us and send us their staff for the boot camps and more. We also bring our activities to the attention of larger organizations such as Parley and Sea Shepherd because we are local and part of a global action plan to protect our blue planet.

The world needs commitment from people who want to take action and this is what organizations such as Clean The Beach Boot Camp brings, a platform to get involved and to evolve. Recurring activities bring a sense of belonging and a constant flow of attention to what we do. Attention fosters interest and interest brings more action and the wheel starts spinning. Similar organizations were created on the island and we now have Clean The Beach Boot Camps in Angola and Kuwait for example created by people who attended a Clean The Beach Boot Camp here.

It’s not only rewarding to participate but it’s also a sign of times that more people around the world want to help. There has never been so many initiatives and progress on this planet to take action, from The Seabin Project to Parley For The Oceans, Mission Blue and more…

Yes, we can change the world and it starts with us!

Trash for Cash

Very interesting article in this week’s Phuket Gazette (October 3 – 9, 2015) on understanding the economy of rubbish on the island. Did you know Phuket generates 729 tonnes of trash a day? Did you know the two operational incinerators have a total burning capacity of 700 tonnes a day?

“The bottom line is that people need to work on creating less trash in their daily lives.”

That’s what we will be addressing in our Clean the Beach Boot Camp Blog in future months. In the meantime, let’s take a look as to how we can best contribute to the people and communities who rely on trash recycling for a living.

Sorting the trash is the number one priority and we can all do it. Separate the plastic bottles, the tin cans and the cardboard is the first step and we are sure some of you are already doing it. Why? Because there are both garbage collection companies and communities who live from the recycling.

Glass also goes back in production and even old bread and pastries  can be sold to farmers for fish or duck food.

Last but not least, members of the Plai Laem Saphan Hin and Klong Koh Pee communities (nearly 300 households) derive their livelihood from what can be found among the heaps on unburned trash, some even living abreast of Phuket’s swelling landfills.

Initiatives such as Clean the Beach Boot Camps contribute to the recycling by picking up trash every other Saturday on beaches around the island.

Joining, sponsoring and supporting Clean the Beach Boot Camp should be part of our routine and for companies, restaurants and shops a CSR activity worth promoting on Phuket when the exponential tourism growth should never prevent the visitors from enjoying amazing and clean white sand beaches.