Plastic Pollution Articles

Scenario: You crack open a cold one after a long day of sailing. Your buddy Jim finishes his first beer (rather quickly) and tosses the can overboard. When prodded about the environment, he confidently responds, “It’s just metal- it will break down naturally.” A debate starts, and you want it to stop so you can enjoy the sunset and your Read More >

Over the years American Sailing has promoted our Plastic Pollution Purge campaign. We have asked our fellow sailors to “bring back more plastic than you take to your boat”, and to have fun practicing your crew overboard drills as you recover trash on the water. But to break the vicious cycle of plastic pollution in the water we must prevent Read More >

In the 1980s, a small group of volunteers in Texas rallied their community together to take a day to clean up their coastal area. They organized a team and trekked a couple miles of beach to remove a few bags of trash from the shoreline. Thirty years later, over 100 countries will be participating in an effort now known as Read More >

World Oceans Day is held every June 8 to spotlight, celebrate and work to raise awareness about the health of our world ocean. When seen from space, the earth looks like a giant blue marble. It is said that earth day was created because that picture from space of the tiny sphere known as earth made it obvious that the Read More >

Maybe our last article about plastic in the ocean scared you a bit, but now that you know what’s going on, it’s time to get motivated. The good news is that little changes in our day-to-day lives can have a big collective impact on reducing the plastic flowing into the ocean, and you’d be surprised how easy it is to Read More >

I don’t need to waste a sailor’s time by telling you there’s plastic in the ocean. If you’re out on the water, you’ve seen it by now. Some places are cleaner than others, and in some parts of the world it has reached an extreme that is truly surreal: As we’ve mentioned before, this is not an “ocean problem.” This Read More >

After learning about Soraya Simi and her work, I checked out her short film First Flush. In just one minute we follow the journey of raindrops hitting the Los Angeles pavement, to the accumulating floodwaters traveling across roadways and down drains, all leading down to the LA River. The drainage carries with it more than just rain: various plastic trash Read More >

Sailors in every corner of the world are taking the ocean’s plastic problem into their own hands, or rather, into their own nets. Balloons, bags, bottles, ghost nets, and all kinds of plastic trash are being pulled out of the water by boaters everywhere, but what if we could do something more with all that trash? This is where 5 Read More >

It is always exciting to encounter marine animals in their natural habitat- the vast diversity of creatures in the ocean both pull at our heartstrings and inspires a sense of wonder. We’ve all seen heartwarming videos of sailors, divers, and surfers having amicable run-ins with favorite marine animals like dolphins, turtles, seals… even sharks! The new trend in viral animal Read More >