We broke a sweat for World Ocean Day

Clean-up, awareness-raising, enthusiasm, impact and three-masted ships… The SeaCleaners teams, our volunteers and our corporate partners have pulled out all the stops to make this World Oceans Day a catalyst for change and awareness!

Faced with the urgent need to preserve the ocean, The SeaCleaners is responding with action. To this end, a two-week period has been dedicated to intensifying efforts and multiplying actions.

And if there’s one type of action that ocean defenders love, whether they’re our volunteers, our partners or the employees of our sponsors, it’s the clean-up! A source of civic commitment and mobilisation, a unifying and intergenerational event, a means of direct action, an incomparable lever for education and the dissemination of precise and targeted messages: beyond the satisfaction of having an immediate visible and measurable impact, the clean-up combines many of the characteristics of a successful awareness-raising action.

11 litter-picking operations were organised in France

This year’s WOD brought together more than 605 participants and collected 1,298 kilos of rubbish:
Lille, Douai, Dunkerque, Le Croisic, Toulouse, Lyon (two operations, including one with our partner La Poste), La Turballe, Paris (3 operations with our sponsors IKKS, Courir and Cabaïa resulting in a total collected of over 350 kilos of trash).

At the same time, 3 awareness-raising campaigns were run by our partners at the Paris Aquarium, the Move Festival in Côtes-d’Armor and the Aquarium in Le Croisic, which also raised awareness among nearly 500 people.

A big thank you and a big well done to all our volunteers and to the teams of our partners and sponsors who took part in this collective effort!

And because small streams make big rivers, we invite you to regularly consult the impact meter we have inaugurated on the homepage of our website, which shows the impact of our action since 2016.

From 8 to 18 June, THE largest gathering of tall ships in the world took place in Seine-Maritime. Every 4 years, for ten days or so, the Armada welcomes almost 3 million visitors to the quays of Rouen, who come to admire the most prestigious boats from the four corners of the planet and to greet the crews.

For The SeaCleaners, it’s THE key event for reaching out to an international public who love boats and the oceans, and who are likely to support the association’s project and get involved. It’s an event carefully prepared by the association’s Volunteering Department (big up to Romain, Lou, Gwenaël, Nolwenn and Cassandre!), and represents a major highlight in our action calendar.

For the 2nd edition in a row, the association spared no effort in presenting its action, raising awareness of the ravages caused by ocean plastic pollution, raising awareness and encouraging more and more people to join our volunteer regional delegations!

In a few figures, The SeaCleaners version of L’Armada 2023 means:

• A 50 m² stand with 3 areas: awareness-raising, MANTA project and shop, which was packed for 10 days
• An awareness-raising corner on the Belem (the historic French three-masted ship, a TSC partner, is a firm favourite with the public)
• 47 TSC volunteers and staff on deck, providing the equivalent of 163 days’ work
• 8,000 people reached on the stand, including 1,400 children
• 900 pocket ashtrays distributed in the concert area
• 3 kilos of cigarette butts collected (thanks to a 30-minute collection every day), i.e. 13,636 cigarette butts!

A huge CONGRATULATIONS to the 35 or so volunteers who came from all the regional delegations in France for this intense event, rich in shared emotions. Jean-Michel, Anne-Sophie, Marie Belen, Jade, Michel, Pascal, Ghislaine, Francis, Pierre, Véronique, François, Timothée, Marie, Anne-Sophie, Antoine, François, Max and all the others: THANK YOU!

Your energy, your enthusiasm, your pleasure at being here and your strength of conviction are what carry us through!

We give a special tip of the hat to Thibault from AutoRecycLAB, a mobile, hands-on DIY plastic recycling workshop using low-tech, human-powered machines, hosted on the TSC stand on 13 and 14 June. Not only did this event raise visitors’ awareness of recycling and ‘do-it-yourself’ in a fun way, it also got them doing their recommended 30 minutes of physical activity and sport every day 😊

“There’s no better way to combat plastic pollution than by taking action”.

The UN’s theme for World Oceans Day 2023 was “Tides are changing” (we salute the reference to a great folk-music classic song!).

To illustrate this positive, constructive and hopeful movement, the UN wanted to highlight initiatives that are changing the tide and providing concrete solutions to the scourge of plastic pollution in the oceans.

We are therefore very proud that the founder of The SeaCleaners, Yvan Bourgnon, has been chosen to take the microphone at the UN in Geneva and talk about our fight for the oceans, our solutions and our impact.