Swim to Remove Plastic from the Ocean

Outdoor Swimmer’s partnership with Climategames enables you to reduce plastic pollution

For a person, swimming into plastic is unpleasant and unsightly. For fish and animals, it can be deadly. Unfortunately, plastic pollution is a significant and growing global problem. Climategames says an estimated 400 million tonnes of plastic are produced worldwide each year. Plastic does not biodegrade easily and can persist in the environment for hundreds of years. Microplastics, tiny particles of plastic, have even been found in human blood.

If we continue with our current consumption and disposal patterns, it is projected that by 2050, the amount of plastic in the oceans could outweigh the total weight of fish. Furthermore, the recycling rate for plastic is dismally low, with less than 10 percent of all plastic ever produced being recycled. This highlights the urgent need for action to reduce plastic waste, improve recycling systems, and develop sustainable alternatives to plastic.

How to help

As well as trying to reduce our personal use of plastic, which Plastic Free July encourages us to do, we have partnered with Climategames to help remove plastic from the ocean and recycle it – but we need your help!

All you need to do is to download the Climategames app, create an account and sign up to our Support Plastic Free July challenge. You can either connect your smart watch to the app or record your swims manually.

For every person who signs up, Climategames will remove 500g of plastic from the ocean – the equivalent of more than 50 plastic drinking bottles – and send it for sorting into different types such as PPE & PET and recycling. Every stage of this process is checked, weighed, tagged and verified to ensure the plastic is fully removed from the waterways.

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