Photo: Sarah Lee/Alison’s Adventures
Last week alone there were 227 beach clean ups held across the UK for the Surfers Against Sewage Big Spring Beach Clean Series. Over 7,500 volunteers showed up to help clean the UK’s coastline, and as a result, over 35 tons of marine litter were removed from the coastal environment.
But where does it go exactly? In 2015, SAS proudly recycled 10,000 plastic bottles and cans from their beach cleans and made Circular Economy their core message. Remember those days when you returned your glass Coca Cola bottle to the shop for a small sum? Well, that’s what we’re talking about here. But SAS have embarrassingly admitted that in the past, most of the plastics collected on their beach cleans have been sent to landfills due to unclear recycling rules and resource constraints. Not this year. Thanks to Parley for the Oceans, that’s no longer the case.
Just weeks ago, Parley for the Oceans sent a shipping container to SAS HQ to fill with plastics intercepted from UK beaches during the Big Spring Beach Clean. Each BSBC lead volunteer was sent huge Parley rubble sacks to fill with plastic from their beach clean ups, which will all be couriered back to the SAS office in Cornwall, put into the shipping container, and shipped off to Parley HQ in New York. How they decide to recycle it is a mystery, but if their track record is anything to go by, it will be nothing but great.
They recently partnered with adidas to create a world’s first with a shoe upper made entirely of yarns and filaments reclaimed and recycled from ocean waste and illegal deep-sea gillnets. Together, Parley and Adidas have proven that ocean plastics can be recycled and turned into something cool, raising more awareness than ever of the marine plastic crisis.
This prototype shoe is just a taster of what is to come of consumer-ready ocean plastic products, so who knows what amazing things are to come from the SAS BSBC plastics. Perhaps a whole line of innovative ocean plastic footwear? I would certainly buy a pair. Would you?
Adidas, in collaboration with Parley for the Oceans, has created a shoe made entirely of recycled ocean waste. Photo: Adidas
