SAS Charity 2017

Dec 12, 2017
4 min read

Rittz Clothing official charity partner:

'We are proud to be a part of the SAS 250 Club, supporting the marine environment which we value so very much, 'Cleaner sea's for clearer minds'.

Surfers Against Sewage – Our work in 2017

We’ve had an amazing year of beach cleans, organising 1393, nearly 4 every day of the year! This has been made possible by an amazing 34,779 volunteers who together have removed nearly 100 tonnes of marine litter from the UK’s beaches.

Regional Environmental Volunteers

We now have an amazing 135 Regional Environmental Volunteers. This means that we cover 135 coastal locations throughout the UK. We have held 3 training events for our volunteers in 2017 meaning that every one of them has attended at least 1 training event.

Our Education Work

We’ve significantly increased the amount, range and sophistication of our education work in 2017. Through our education programmes we aim to equip, empower and inspire the next generation of ocean and inland conservationists. We now have 4 different programmes to work with a variety of different school groups, these include:

Be the Change
Seas 4 Life
Plastic Free Schools
Ocean School

Our Be The Change education programme has seen us visit North Devon, Birmingham, Newcastle & Bristol. It’s been great to take our education talks inland to urban areas and the kids have been incredibly engaged.

Ocean Schools enabled us to provide outdoor educational experiences to over 1,300 pupils in the summer of 2017. Not everyone is lucky enough to know how amazing our beaches, waves and marine ecosystems are, sharing this beauty with children across the South West is vital to inspire and equip the next generation to become ocean guardians.

Our Beach Clean Box & Schools Beach Clean Box

Our Beach Clean Boxes have been a huge success helping communities across the UK to organise 417 beach cleans. They have proved especially useful for our volunteers to take along to events. They have proven so popular that we have recently launched a dedicated Schools Beach Clean Box!

Plastic Free Coastlines

Our Plastic Free Coastline project was launched on 20th July 2017 and has already had a huge impact. The idea is for communities to work with local government and businesses to become plastic free and stop plastic pollution at source, once this has been achieved we award them Plastic Free Status.

Momentum builds for a Deposit Return System (DRS) thanks to our Message In a Bottle Campaign

In the UK we use a staggering 38.5 million single-use plastic bottles and a further 58 million cans every day. Only half of these are recycled, so it’s no surprise that many of these end up on our beaches and in our oceans.

We have been at the forefront of campaigning for a deposit return system, whereby a small deposit on plastic bottles dramatically increases return and recycling rates. Over the past year almost 300,000 supporters have signed our petition, which we delivered to 10 Downing Street in September. We have also engaged regularly with the Environment Minister Therese Coffey MP on the issue, presented oral and written evidence to the Environmental Audit Committee, given evidence to the London Assembly Environment Committee and provided Defra with detailed evidence to their consultation on deposit return systems.

Environment Minister Therese Coffey MP spoke at our Plastic Free Coastlines event to update us on the government’s progress towards DRS. She has recently visited Norway to witness successful deposit systems in action as a result of our campaign, which will help inform how the UK can plan & introduce a successful deposit return system. Our petition has been one of the driving forces to engage the government, industry and the public on the issue of plastic bottle pollution. We are also delighted that Iceland and the Co-op supermarkets have added their support for deposit returns. We are truly on the cusp of huge change on plastic bottle pollution!

Surfers Against Sewage – All-Party Parliamentary Group

In November we were thrilled to welcome and engage government Ministers, Members of Parliament, industry leaders, environmentalists, NGOs and activists at our Plastic Free Coastlines event in Parliament to highlight plastic pollution and the growing support for a UK-wide deposit return system (DRS). It provides a platform for all stakeholders to discuss solutions to the plastic pollution issue.

Communicating the issues that we are seeking to address

Water Quality

Our Safer Seas Service is the only national free real-time water quality app. The app is free to download or to access via an online interactive map. 7 coastal water companies provide free Combined Sewer Overflow (CSO) data during the bathing season, with Wessex Water, Welsh Water, Yorkshire Water and Northumbrian Water providing data year round. The Environment Agency provide simplified Pollution Risk Forecasts at 155 sites across England.

We are currently developing a new phase for the Safer Seas Service to expand reach, usability and function.

The SAS Team & Governance

We now have a team of 13 people working at SAS. Ellie our Education Officer has settled in well and has already had a huge impact, helping to develop new schools programmes and reach more students than ever before. In 2018 we are hoping to recruit a Project Officer to work on our Plastic Free Coastlines project.

We are delighted to have 3 new Trustees on our Board.

Dr Heather Koldewey is a marine biologist and environmentalist. She is currently the Section Head of Global Programmes at the Zoological Society of London.
Jon Khoo is Innovation Partner at Interface with a focus on sustainability, inclusive business and intrapreneurship.
Ben Suffell is the founder and managing director of QTS Fundraising. He is also a founding member of The Olive Network, a fledgling online community, designed to engage people across the globe and to curate humanitarianism by encouraging charities, NGO’s and individuals to collaborate.

We are a small team that continues to have a big impact in our area of work thanks to the incredible community of volunteers that we work with. Our philosophy is to give the community the tools, knowledge & passion to protect the marine environment.