click Coastal Currents for festival info

Hastings Seafront Promenade,

near Hastings Pier, East of Warrior Square

This work is about our need to WAKE UP to our collective responsibility for cleaning up our messy  lifestyles; I wanted it to be both playful and serious. It is not about judgement and criticism. I’m reaching out to people’s hearts because the heart can hear things that the mind would rather deny out of fear or complacency. I want to inspire positive action because we can all make a difference with our everyday choices- choices about what we buy, what we eat and drink as well as how we dispose of packaging and things we no longer need or want; we can choose to buy things with less packaging; we can choose to pick up rubbish when we see it on the beach and on the pavement so it doesn’t end up in the sea, instead of expecting someone else to do it. We need to use our imaginations in order to evolve our ways of being and I'm convinced we can enjoy at least some of this process. It feels good to pick up litter and care for our local environment!

detail, dreaming beyond the plastic age

1. always carry a reusable, leak proof drinking container to reduce your use of plastic bottles and take-away cups. I use my resusable coffee/tea cup for water also. You could relax for a change and have your drink in!
2. If you consume bottled drinks, try to buy in glass instead of plastic.
3. use good old fashioned bars of soap instead of shower gels and liquid hand soaps
4. challenge yourself to be aware of the packaging you buy with your food and at least try to reduce it; for example, buy loose fruit and veg and carry in your own reusable bag. 
5. when you see rubbish anywhere on the pavement or on the beach, PICK IT UP, unless it is obviously unhygienic (do not put your health at risk!). It will make a huge difference if we all picked up the bits of rubbish that we typically walk over in the course of a day. 

A little good news:

Highly informative for the whole family, and ending on a positive note, BBC documentary The Secret Life of Landfill: a Rubbish History, available on bbc iplayer only until 22 September. watch it while you can!

an article about positive change from Global Citizen, a great source of balanced positivity on environmental matters

Global Citizen's 7 ways to cut out junk plastic

Global Citizen's 10 Facts About Plastic Pollution

You Absolutely Need to Know:

1. Since the 1950s, around 8.3 billion tons of plastic have been produced worldwide.
2. In some parts of the world, using plastic is already illegal.
3. 73% of beach litter worldwide is plastic.
4. A million plastic bottles are bought around the world every minute.
5. Worldwide, about 2 million plastic bags are used every minute.
6. 90% of plastic polluting our oceans is carried by just 10 rivers.
7. Plastic is killing more than 1.1 million seabirds and animals every year.
8. The average person eats 70,000 microplastics each year.
9. The average time that a plastic bag is used for is … 12 minutes.
10. Over the past 50 years, world plastic production has doubled.

Further information about marine plastic pollution and articles about the rise of 

plastic rubbish found on UK beaches:

Global Citizen Plastic news articles

Cornwall Live article about Cornwall's Beaches after storm Eleanor

Guardian article, 'Shocking' rise in rubbish washing up on UK beaches

A particular bugbear of mine is cigarette remains which smokers fling without a thought onto the pavement; they end up in drains which lead to the sea, of course. I am not attacking smokers! This is a symptom of our 'throw away' attitude that needs to change. Check out the article. Image on the right pictures a pile of cigarette ends I recently collected on a very short stretch of my road; imagine how many are on the streets and pavements across the planet, waiting for rain flow to take them to the sea...