Surfers Against Sewage: The charity making big waves in marine conservation

In our previous blog post, we introduced the marine conservation and campaigning charity Surfers Against Sewage as our newest partner. The charity organization is made up of a community of ocean activists dedicated to the protection of our seas, beaches and rivers, and are a grassroots movement that’s become one of Britain’s most successful environmental campaigns.

Message in a Bottle campaign stunt outside Westminster - Image credit Surfers Against Sewage. 

Last November, Surfers Against Sewage released their 2021 Water Quality Report, which highlighted the drastic increase in sewage pollution affecting the UK’s coastline and rivers. They found that 5,517 sewage discharge notifications were issued by the Safer Seas & River Service over a 12-month period, an 87.6% increase over the previous year which saw sewage being pumped into rivers and seas 400,000 times nationwide in 2020 alone. This is not only having a dire impact on fragile marine ecosystems but also posing a threat to us, with six out of eight rivers tested in their Citizen Science Project posing a serious risk to human health.

Through tireless campaigning and community action Surfers Against Sewage has made big waves last year, fighting the sewage dumping crisis with successes including:

• Water companies must now provide real-time information on sewage overflow discharges, as well as monitor and report on its impact on water quality.
• The government must provide a plan to tackle sewage pollution by September 2022.
• The government placed a legal duty on water companies to reduce the impacts of discharges.
• Powers to create a Deposit Return Scheme and charge for all single-use items.
• Including the marine environment within the scope of the law, so that targets must also consider life a sea as well as land.
• The SAS communities took part in the Million Mile Clean in 2021, engaging 140,000 volunteers to remove over 320,000kg of plastic from over 1.2 million miles of beaches.

Perranporth One Million Mile Clean - Image credit Surfers Against Sewage.

Our team here at Geckota believe our organisation should have a positive social and environmental impact. We pride ourselves for being a carbon neutral company, offsetting our CO2 by funding rainforest protection projects and are proud to now be working alongside Surfers Against Sewage to become a more sustainable business.

Over the last few months, we have been involved with the team over at SAS to collaborate on a brand-new watch, with a design inspired by the organisation and what they stand for, with £50 of every watch to go to funding Surfer Against Sewage’s important marine conservation work. Check out a sneak peak below, more details about our new SAS watch will be discussed in our next blog post!