Our ocean is incredible. It is responsible for producing half of Earth’s oxygen and is home to millions of species. We need our ocean, but are we doing enough to protect and preserve it?
Human action has a direct effect on the ocean and on all living beings that depend on it for survival (including humans beings). The good news is that you can be a part of the solution! Ocean Conservancy created a fun way to make a real difference, right in your own community!
Their Clean Swell app is a free mobile app that is easily downloaded to your mobile device. In minutes, you can create a profile and organize a clean up. You can include as many or as few people as you wish – you can even hold a solo cleanup and simply document the items in the community that you have collected on your own. You’ll be able to record your efforts and reach new milestones. You don’t need to live near a beach to participate. The app encourages anyone, anywhere to pick up trash within their own community.
Trash from inland environments still travel to the ocean as rain or wind pushes the trash into storm drains that connect with local bodies of water such as streams and rivers. These bodies of water often flow into the ocean, inevitably sending any trash that has collected within them into the ocean too. So, whether you live near the beach or in a city or rural community hundreds of miles from the nearest ocean – you can still be a part of the mission to keep trash out of the sea.
For every clean up, users are given three options for their environment: Saltwater, Freshwater, Inland. Clean Swell encourages everyone around the world to join the movement to reduce the amount of trash that ends up in our ocean by redirecting it’s path through clean up and proper disposal of the items that are strewn across land and beaches throughout the world.
As a user, you are not only able to track your own numbers and reach the milestones you’ve set for yourself, you are also able to follow along with the global total for trash collected (over 400 million pounds of trash to date) which is available to scientists and policymakers worldwide!
What a difference we can make when we work together to promote positive change.
The Gentle Earth Journal 