Lizzie Carr has decided to take plastic pollution into her own hands, by taking to London’s waterways on her paddle board.
It all started when Lizzie paddle boarded the length of England. Over the 400 miles, she documented every single piece of plastic that she found in the water, logging over 2,000 pieces in total.
Her efforts came to the attention of hundreds of people on social media, who began to join Lizzie in her efforts to clean up London’s waterways.
“In London, there’s rubbish everywhere. Every time you clear an area you could come back two weeks later and its there again”
This collective response and push for action prompted lizzie to take her movement to the next level, creating the app ‘Plastic Patrol’, which allows users to photograph the plastic they find and tag its location. This builds up an informed evidence based database which can not only help build a collective behavioural change, but can also be used to put pressure on authority figures with the power to instate large scale change and inform policy - helping as well as prompting them to address and tackle this huge global issue.
For now, the information from Lizzie’s app creates a huge interactive database on a global map which people can access to participate in clean ups. The information from he app is also sent to the University of Nottingham, who are identifying the clean up hot spots in the UK.
Since being set up in 2016, Plastic Patrol have already made strides to remove plastic waste from 30 countries around the World, combining community action with disruptive technology to gather important data for scientific research into plastic pollution.
“#PlasticPatrol began on a paddleboard, but has grown to be a global movement of like-minded people working together on land and water to protect the environment we love”
Lizzie’s App is available to download on both the App Store and Play Store, and more information can be found on Plastic Patrol and the work they do here:
You can read our blog on the scary reality on how 80% of plastic pollution in the ocean comes from waterways, and the types of plastics that are the biggest threat here:
https://aquapaxwater.com/blogs/news/plastic-bottles-now-the-biggest-threat-to-waterways
We’re off to download #PlasticPatrol, let’s get clearing!