SAS: Warning for our beaches

From the Indy:

Celine Gehret has been asked to pose for photographs many times but never while wearing a pink colander for a hat and a plastic shopping bag for a face mask. But Gehret, one of Cornwall’s most outstanding surfers, is anxious to make a point.

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The campaign group Surfers Against Sewage (SAS) claims that Britain’s beaches are being damaged by the “growing problem” of marine litter and the discharge of effluent into the ocean.

An unusually warm April has already led to packed beaches but to coincide with the official start of the bathing season next month, SAS will launch a new warning system whereby beach users - from families with buckets and spades to professional surfers and body-boarders - will be able to receive real time sewage alerts that will warn them that the water they are intending to swim in is unclean.

The alerts will be sent by text and tweet and will cover up to 50 of Britain’s best beaches. The warning system is being set up in conjunction with three of Britain’s biggest water companies, South-West, Southern and Welsh. The alerts are part of a wider surfing campaign called “Protect Our Waves” and will be accompanied by an arresting poster campaign featuring some of Britain’s star surfers.

In the most shocking image of a campaign produced by the advertising agency M&C Saatchi, which includes the Conservative Party, Coca-Cola and the Department of Health among its client roster, the champion British body-boarder Jack Johns is pictured covered head-to-toe in what appears to be excrement (it is in fact brown coloured polystyrene). Johns, 24, who began surfing in his native Cornwall at the age of 16 and is the current world belly-boarding champion, said Cornish waters were generally clean but he had encountered severe problems off the east coast of England. “I have been surfing in Yorkshire among raw sewage and it’s horrific – you don’t realise until it is right in front of you,” he said. “There are amazing waves in Yorkshire when the conditions are right but raw sewage is being pumped into the North Sea so often and there’s nothing stopping it.”

Gehret, 30, who is shown entirely shrouded in marine refuse, is a four times Swiss champion surfer who is based at Fistral beach in north Cornwall. She recalled once trying to surf at Whistand Bay in south Cornwall and finding that the water was brown. “We didn’t go in because it didn’t seem safe. The waves were good but you couldn’t surf.” Hugo Tagholm, director of SAS, said: “I have suffered from stomach bugs and throat infections. If you visit any beach in the UK there will be marine litter and there has been a 120 per cent increase since 1994.”

Among the beaches being covered by the new warning system are Bude, Porthleven and Porthtowan in Cornwall, Brighton and the Welsh beaches of Newgale and Broadhaven. “These real time alerts are about giving people reassurance. If pollution incidents are being reported in real time then people using bathing spots can have confidence in whether or not the water they are using is clean.”

SAS hopes that Yorkshire Water will join the alert system next year and that the remainder of Britain’s water companies will eventually sign up to the scheme. The images of champion surfers covered in sewage and detritus will be shown in magazines and on strategic billboard sites, such as alongside the River Thames, which conveys large amounts of marine litter into the ocean. Graham Fink, executive creative director of M&C Saatchi, said: “Most people think of the seaside as quintessentially British with fresh air, sea and sand. But it’s not all what it seems. Lurking under the surface are hidden horrors. We wanted to smack people in the face with a wet fish and show the problem in an arresting way.”

Join Surfers Against Sewage today

http://www.sas.org.uk/join/

This doesn't sound good

Union leaders warn over coastguard cuts

The Independent says...

Union leaders are set to tell MPs of their concerns about government plans to cut back on coastguard centres, leaving just one in the South West.

Under government proposals, the number of round-the-clock coastguard centres will be reduced from 18 to just three.

On Tuesday the House of Commons Transport Committee will take evidence on the coastguard plans from the Public and Commercial Services Union, the RMT transport union , the Prospect union and the ships' masters' union Nautilus.

In the Government's plan, there will be three 24-hour operational centres - at Aberdeen, in the Southampton/Portsmouth area and at Dover.

In addition, there will be five sub-centres open during daylight hours - at Swansea, at Falmouth in Cornwall, at Bridlington in East Yorkshire, at either Belfast or Liverpool and at either Stornoway or Shetland.

Shipping minister Mike Penning has said the major reorganisation of the coastguard will improve services and cut costs.

He added that the current system was "not well placed" to meet the challenge of larger ships, congested seas and the increasing number of people visiting coastal areas for leisure activities.

When the coastguard plans were announced last year, RMT leader Bob Crow said: "It's a shocking indictment on this ConDem Government that plans to cut our coastguards could even be considered, let alone implemented, and shows that they are quite prepared to hack away at life or death services. These proposals must be fought tooth and nail every step of the way.

the hottest fires

At work, I've doing a lot of work on how we might develop our company brand and what we hope that brand might come to mean to people. In doing that I've had to try and figure out what the company's promise is to its customers. 'Brand value' is now almost seen as an oxymoron - but it isn't - there are reasons we all choose the products we do, and it all comes down to what we believe the product will deliver; its promise. Trying to encapsulate that promise in a way that is easy to understand....is not easy. I think this commercial does it perfectly.

holy shit, what a ride

Today I simply point you to David Hieatt's blog entry - 'Love & Purpose'

David founded Howies - a company I used to admire greatly for it's ethics and ethos as much for its products (while David was in charge), and he founded the Do Lectures too.

a small act of generosity

Hilde Back & Chris Mburu

One often repeated theme of this blog is the fact that doing something no matter how small, rather than nothing, can have a big impact. On a daily basis I am dismayed by the marine litter on my local beach and even more dismayed that I've only ever done something about it once. But this story is a good example of how small acts can pay huge dividends. It's being widely reported but as usual it's the Guardian that I'm quoting from:

Sponsorship from an unknown Swedish woman led Chris Mburu towards a UN job and to a national education fund.

We all face crossroads in life, but few present choices as stark as those confronting Chris Mburu as he grew up in rural Kenya. He was an exceptionally bright and hard-working lad, but the road to secondary education – and a better life – was exclusively for the well-off. It was the other path, towards a life of poverty and hard graft in the fields, that he would have to take.

1. A Small Act
2. Production year: 2010
3. Country: USA
4. Cert (UK): 12A
5. Runtime: 88 mins
6. Directors: Jennifer Arnold
7. More on this film

Or at least, that was the case until he became the beneficiary of charitable sponsorship by a Swedish woman, Hilde Back. A thought-provoking new documentary, A Small Act, shows how her $15-a-month sponsorship enabled him not only to complete his school education, but to attend the University of Nairobi and - thanks to a Fulbright scholarship - Harvard law school. It all culminated with a career as a human rights investigator for the United Nations.

Mburu never forgot the sponsor who changed his life. But it wasn't until American film-maker Jennifer Arnold came to him with a plan for making a film about his experience that he had the chance to meet Back and tell her what he had always wanted to say face to face: "Thank you".

"I think the thing that really drew me to the story in the first place was the idea that an ordinary, everyday person can have a quite extraordinary effect on the world, just by doing something small," Arnold told the Guardian on recent trip to London.

Her film – released in the UK on 15 April – celebrates the profound, life-changing impact of a single act of charity and the way it can spread ripples throughout society.

"When I started to make the film it was the Bush era in the United States and a lot of my friends were feeling quite disenfranchised; that it didn't matter what we protested for, or what we voted for, it wouldn't change the world at all," she says.

"But then I heard Chris Mburu's story, about how a woman did a small thing, and had no idea of how important it was, and yet it had such an effect. That was really inspirational to me. It's an uplifting, hopeful story."

The poignancy of Back's charitable act became even more profound when it emerged that she had fled to Sweden as a child to escape the Holocaust. Yet decades later, her regular gift had educated a man who would, without knowing of her experience, dedicate his working life to investigating crimes against humanity around the world – as well as set up his own charity, The Hilde Back Education Fund, which now helps more poor Kenyan children afford education.

"We hope this film will deliver the message that a small act can indeed go a long way and affect a whole community and society at large," says Mburu. "And I think we are seeing this already, because a lot of people are seeing the film and saying that they want to do their own 'small act'. We are really encouraging that."

The film also follows the extremely moving story of three of the brightest children at a rural primary school as they prepare for their difficult KCPE exam at the end of primary school. It's genuinely edge-of-the-seat stuff: getting top marks puts them in the running for one of Mburu's scholarships and, with that, the potential to change their own and their families' lives forever.

"Initially, we just wanted to make a great film, but it quickly became clear it would go way beyond that," says Arnold. "So many people have now seen the film, been inspired and got involved with the Hilde Back fund."

It's a tribute to all involved with the making of A Small Act that, in the 10 days after its premiere at Sundance in 2010, the Hilde Back Education Fund raised $90,000 (£55,000), transforming the charity from a local to a national organisation.

"When we started the whole mission, we could only help 10 kids a year, but now, after making this film, we are able to reach out to a lot more kids," says Mburu, whose organisation now helps 160 children.

"It's discouraging when you can't help everyone that needs help, but it's so encouraging when you see the ones that you can help going on, getting through and getting a better life."

Mburu believes education is the key to solving the political and sectarian conflicts that rip up so much of Africa. "Without jobs and education, it is easy for politicians to give people a really insignificant amount of money to terrible things," he says. "With an education, they can make their own choice, they can be free. This is my message."

Oil spill clean up idea: swarms of sailing drones

As seen in the Guardian: another mad idea with lofty purpose....it just might work. Robot boats designed to sail upwind as spilled oil flows downwind: a big idea for a big problem?

Protei is a concept for an autonomous inflatable articulated sailboat that cleans up oil spills Simulated image: protei.org/Flickr

For big problems, you need big ideas, even if they seem crazily ambitious. And with the anniversary of the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spillon 20 April, a swarm of robot oil-slick clearing boats is a timely big idea.

The concept of the sailing drone is being developed by a project calledProtei, which is notable in that all the technology and software is open source - no patents, no copyright. So, if it works, anyone can use it.

The idea, explained to me by project co-ordinator Cesar Harada, is as follows. In marine oil spills, the oil is blown downwind, so boats designed to sail upwind while dragging absorbent booms behind can soak up the oil. As the boats have no crew, no-one's health is endangered by oil or dispersants and the boats can go out in all weather (they are designed to be self-righting - a "torpedo with a sail", says Harada).

"There are oil spills all the time," Harada says when I ask him why he started the project, for example in the Niger delta. "And using the same natural force that is pushing the oil to clean it up makes sense."
But sailing upwind, dragging a large load, is not easy. So the team have developed a hull that flexes like the backbone of a fish, which they say make sailing upwind easier. Harada, now based in New Orleans, is ex-MIT and a TED fellow and many of the team are based in academic engineering departments.

They have tested six small scale prototypes - see the video below - but aim to launch a full scale boat, 8m long with a 20m boom-tail, from Rotterdam in September. "We know the idea works, but not how well it works," says Harada. Protei have raised enough to keep the project afloat for a while, but are seeking more, in particular for sensors to monitor the tests.

The drones would be deployed in swarms, which would avoid each other either by using a decentralised swarm algorithm or by being controlled remotely from the shore. "Since I got to New Orleans, we have really changed the project so that local fishermen will be able to build and control the boats," says Harada. "When I first came they told me I was crazy and would steal all their jobs with an robot sailing boat."

Harada also sees long term applications of the sailing drones in clearing up the plastic and other pollutants concentrated in the great Pacific garbage patch and in towing scientific payloads around the oceans.

The nearest existing equivalent appears to be the patented Waveglider, which uses wave power to travel the oceans. But they are slow, claims Harada, doing about 2 knots. He says Protei's sailing drones will be much cheaper and faster.

Of course, we've also had Kevin Costner's centrifuge-based oil clean up technology. That is also patented and does not appear to have been deployed in a major operation yet.

So, Protei seems to me to be useful, simple and backed by smart people. Crucially, by virtue of being open source, the profit motive can't compromise the search for the best technical solution. But I'd be keen to hear what you all think, especially if you have knowledge of relevant areas.

and here's the video