Our Story

Gary Jolliffe - founder

I was very lucky to grow up in Norway which even 40 years ago had underfloor heating & automated recycling & bottle return schemes as standard! Norwegians even have a special word that recognises the importance of spending quality time outdoors, immersed in nature, ‘Friluftsliv’ which translates to Free, Air, Life. It never left me.

20 years or so ago during an amazing trip to Chilean Patagonia working as a volunteer sea kayak guide with Raleigh International, we were paddling around the barely populated & stunning Chronos Archipelago, It was incredible! Soaring snow capped peaks, endless azure blue fjords & driftwood lined horseshoe coves. Pristine wilderness!

Not really…

To our shock, before setting up camp & getting a brew on each evening, we had to clear stacks of plastic pollution from the strand line at almost every landing site!

A byproduct of the burgeoning aquaculture industry in the area, the quantity & variety of plastic was astounding. Unfortunately I can’t find the original photos (pre digital days) but we used the discarded fish feed sacks & filled them with outboard motor oil containers, rubber gloves, welly boots, overalls, antibiotic syringes, single use drinks and food containers, buoys, netting ETC and made dramatic piles.

It was shocking to see & really took the shine off the privilege of being there. The photos were submitted by Raleigh International to the Chilean Government & apparently some people in suits jumped up and down for a while. Alas, from what I have witnessed & seen since, like everywhere else, things have got much worse.

Ever since that trip, as a keen outdoors person it has aways depressed me that you can not go anywhere on the planet now to escape the evidence of our lack of respect for our surroundings & nature. 

It was not until a family trip to the Pembrokeshire National Park in 2016 that something snapped & I decided that I had to stop tinkering around the edges and get fully hands on helping to sort out the appalling state of our coastlines.

The photo above is actually from that trip, incredibly, even in the UK’s only solely coastal National Park, you could not go for a run, swim or a paddle without being brutally reminded of plastic pollution around every corner.

So, I got a boat, quit the 9 to 5 and started clearing up :)