Loading images...
Raising Plastic Pollution Awareness from the UAE to the rest of the world
Theresa and David are avid campers and love to be outdoors. Theresa loves the beach and sea, and David is more of a fan of the deserts and mountains. Both grew up with a strong environmental conscience, particularly in all things relating to plastic. David, through his father’s work as a veterinarian, became aware of the destructive and fatal effects of plastic pollution on the animal kingdom at an early age. Theresa’s love of the beach and sea was all too often marred by irresponsible beach goers leaving their waste behind, and the increasing quantity of plastic based debris being washed onto the beaches in the region. Both harbour a deep routed desire to promote the preservation and protection of these treasured environments, which have unfortunately come under increasing threat from carelessly discarded refuse and waste. A large proportion of this refuse is made up of single use plastics.
Theresa and David have lived in the UAE for most of their lives: Theresa was born in Abu Dhabi and David moved to Dubai when he was nine years old.
Theresa was brought up in the UAE and also went to school and university in the UK, where she studied law. David was born in Germany in 1977, and moved with his parents and sister to Dubai in 1987. David was educated in Papua New Guinea, the UAE, Egypt and Germany, where he studied law and international relations. David is a founding member of the Emirates Environmental Group. David is also a member of the Rotary Club of Jumeirah, Dubai and Dubai Natural History Group.
Theresa and David at the foot of the Torres del Paine
The PNSF Expedition intends to highlight the similarly destructive effects of the irresponsible consumption of single use plastics throughout the globe in order to raise awareness, understanding, and a reaction against the growing global plastic pollution problem.
The PNSF Expedition will:
-
Collect information and data, accompanied by articles, on the effects of plastic pollution globally, which will be made available for organizations as educational and informational data.
-
Provide objective media content by presenting instances of plastic pollution through pictures, videos and blogs.
-
Highlight and participate in the efforts of environmental agencies and other non-governmental organizations in the fight against plastic pollution.
-
Document “best practices” in the utilization of alternatives to single use plastics, and meet with experts in the field of plastic pollution.
-
Spread a better understanding of the UAE in the furthest corners of the world, and showcase the UAE’s own fight against plastic pollution.
14 Responses to About Us
Leave a Reply
Our passion is the great outdoors. We love to discover new places, but unfortunately we have encountered all too often the destructive effects of plastic pollution in the most remote corners of the globe.
Thus the idea came to combine the two – a great journey with a great cause. PlasticNotSoFantastic was born…
Join us in our quest to: explore – encounter – investigate – learn – ACT!
© Copyright 2011, 2012 - PNSF Expedition
It is actually difficult to get familiar people about this matter, however you seem like you know what you are writing on! Thx
You ask people to give you money so you can go on holiday, travel the world and see lots of amazing countries all the while DRIVING in a huge petrol truck. That’s like 100 people from the US EPA FLYING to Mauritius to go on a fact-finding mission all on the tax payer’s dime.
In return you take photos of trash (provide objective media content by presenting instances of plastic pollution through pictures, videos and blogs)and then show them to your millions of followers on Twitter (89 people).
Wow.
Wow exactly, Jeff. Thanks for your support…so many negative thoughts are pretty amazing coming from just one individual.
BTW: currently we have 89 followers on Facebook, and 54 on Twitter! And counting…
I should be more positive of you driving your big, polluting truck around the world for fun?
http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/2008/01/23/18-awareness/
This kind of sums it up.
Hi Jeff, seems you’re working at Henderson Rowe. I know a guy there called Dom. Send my regards next time you see him.
Interesting website you’ve found: “…all of the world’s problems can be solved through “awareness.” Meaning the process of making other people aware of problems, and then magically someone else like the government will fix it.”
Fixing the Symptoms
At this point it might be good to mention that David and his father work at the Central Veterinary Research facility here in Dubai. David’s dad first coined the term “Fatal Pollution” based on the fact that one of the most common causes of death in animals which come to them for post mortem analysis is as a result of plastic ingestion. The animals are unable to expel the plastic, which forms a calciferous mass in their stomachs and they eventually die a slow and painful death. If the animal is lucky enough still to be alive when it’s delivered to them there is a chance to try and flush the plastic out, but this is very rarely successful.
So, how does one deal with the above scenario, if it confronts you on such a regular basis in your working life? You try and flush the plastic out, or you operate on the animal. However, in the end, you know that even if you can keep this one alive, there will be hundreds where you won’t succeed. Like an illness, treating the symptoms doesn’t provide a cure. The only way to provide a cure is to prevent the animals eating plastic in the first place, which means that us humans have to stop dumping it in the desert and on the beach just because we are too lazy to take it home.
Fixing the Disease
Hence, we spend our weekends collecting rubbish on the beach, in the desert and in the mountains. We’ve set up a Rotary community group that goes out to collect rubbish. We spent part of our honeymoon cleaning up a wonderful plateau in Oman, which was a favourite picnic spot for Omani’s until the government closed the road to the site because the rubbish problem was getting unmanageable. We can’t do all this on our own though, hence the awareness campaign, so people join us in picking up rubbish, and know to consume so as to create less waste, or none at all. No one had told the picnickers on the plateau to take their rubbish home, and they were not aware of the consequences their dumping was having on the donkeys and goats that graze there.
I’m afraid you’re also seeing this from the perspective of someone who clearly has an environmental conscience, or at least consciousness.
You would be in a significant minority here in the UAE, which is after all our target audience, and one of the largest producers of waste in the world. This is clearly symptomatic of the fact that many children and adults don’t have an understanding of what the consequences of their consumption choices are. If they did know not to consume so much plastic, and not to leave their waste behind after camping or a picnic, then we wouldn’t be confronted with the scenes depicted in some of our photographs, and companies would not dump illegally resulting in “death valley” (see photo gallery).
Our “Millions” of Followers
Our Facebook and Twitter accounts are useful to an extent, and we hope our following will grow. However, more importantly (and there is no reason you would know) we are getting good and regular coverage from local media here. Whether it’s TV interviews with channels like Alhurra (in Arabic), in the newspapers, on the radio, or in outdoor magazines, these are really the more important channels for us and the anti-plastic campaign. Social media is becoming more important in the “Arab Spring” but it shouldn’t be overestimated or used as a benchmark in its ability to convey a message in societies which are new to social media (like the Middle East) or societies which have little or no access to the luxuries of internet (some of our other target audiences will fit this category in Africa, Mongolia, and South America).
Our Choice of Transport
We also know that a petrol / diesel car is not an ideal solution, but there are no viable alternatives. Going by airplane to the various places we intend to visit would be hugely more polluting. We will be using fuel enhancing tablets to increase efficiency, and we will offset our entire carbon footprint, most likely with http://www.southpolecarbon.com and by planting trees at a number of projects along the way. Perhaps you might like to consider doing the same, or ask your company to offset theirs?
We could just stay at home ….
We could be disheartened by criticism and decide not to go, but it’s interesting to note that living our current lives we produce more carbon than we will do driving around the world (based on our 2 bed house in the UAE, one airplane trip home to Europe, a couple of business trips via airplane, driving to work, etc …). This makes sense if you consider that we will be camping 90% of the time, so our water consumption will be low, and we won’t be using heating or air conditioning, fridges, TV’s, ovens, water heaters, or all the other appliances that most modern homes have.
A few other things we are doing:
Our servers are run on 100% wind energy.
We haven’t had the need to print much yet, but when we do it’s on Terraskin – paper made out of rock rather than wood. Our business cards are made with Terraskin and don’t contain bleach.
Fuel infusion tablets for greater fuel efficiency, reducing our GHG emissions.
Who’s paying?
With regard to your comment on asking people to give us money so we can have a holiday, we’re being sponsored by companies, who have the opportunity to get positive brand exposure over an extensive period. Individuals can donate if they like, through our PayPal button, but there’s no obligation and we have not actively approached any individual person for money. We hope that companies will see the value of the expedition, in terms of brand exposure over a significant period of time, but, amongst other things, we are also hoping all the companies that sponsor us will take up our offer for us to come and do presentations to their staff about how to reduce their plastic consumption and effects their consumption choices have. A number of companies want to use the trip to test their products – an environment which would be very costly for them to replicate.
We will be selling and giving away almost all of our worldly possessions before we leave to raise money – the house will revert to the landlord and we don’t want to have to pay storage fees. We will be paying the freight for anything we can’t get sponsorship for, and it’s fair to say, that we anticipate to be completely broke by the end of this exercise.
Sounds like a holiday?
This is a life decision, not a trip to Tenerife.
Behind the scenes we are working hard to make sure that a broad range of stakeholders will benefit from the PNSF Expedition.
Naturally, the general public is one of our stakeholders and we intend to convey a lot of information to them, through whichever medium possible, as you point out, usually through pictures, videos and blogs. Any suggestions as to better media are welcomed.
Environmental agencies and NGOs are some of our other stakeholders, and we intend to help one large international NGO with producing content for their environmental education materials, and we will in fact be working with them to distribute and disseminate their existing environmental education material. Through us (and our truck) they will be able to reach some extremely remote communities which they would either never reach, or it would cost the NGO a significant amount of their precious capital, to achieve aims which we can do on a funded basis.
Our other NGO stakeholders will be receiving fresh, non-copyrighted material, which they will be free to use for any purpose they wish (campaigns, literature, school visits, advertisements, web content, etc.) all for free to them.
We will also be linking up with a number of academic institutions, particularly in the UAE. Since we are still in discussions we are not able to reveal the exact nature of the cooperation, however it will range from providing data to faculties working on environmental issues, to providing raw media content to vocational faculties for their use in projects.
Our sponsor companies are also our stakeholders. Their customers and staff will become more aware of the problem of plastic pollution, which in turn should have an impact on their consumer decisions.
In summary, we are determined to bring value to a much broader spectrum of stakeholders than could ever be represented by our Facebook and Twitter page or through our website. We believe in both actions and words, as demonstrated by our commitment to practical solutions (clean ups), but these must go hand in hand with targeting the root cause of the problem (which truly is a lack of awareness and environmental education).
Knwoldege wants to be free, just like these articles!
I actually knew about a majority of this, but having said that, I still considered it turned out helpful. Excellent job!
Great insights – and I think your cause is terrific. I’ve calculated our carbon footprint as we are also embarking on an around the world by road trip. The results show that we’ll reduce our current footprint from an estimated 140 tons / year today (we fly a lot for business and commute heavily for work) to less than 60 for the two of us- or under half the amount we use today. So even at that most basic level the argument falls apart. Hoping to meet up with you on the road.
Dear Wendy,
Also we love the fact that you are taking your dog. We have been giving this a lot of thought, but just don’t think it is feasible for us.
thank-you for your kind words and great to hear you are planning your own trip. I really like your website too. When are you heading out, and what is your route? It would indeed be great to meet up on the road. Our rough dates are: leave the UAE by March 2012, head into Iran and Eastern & Central Europe for May / June, central Asian States thereafter, with Mongolia by August 2012. Vladivostok by September, then we ship the car via Japan to Australia where we will be until early December. January 2013 hopefully the car will reach South America, where we will head up the Pan Americana through Central America aiming for the US and Canada by July 2013. Southern Africa for September 2013 and then up the East Coast back to the UAE. Bit of a tight schedule!
It was very interesting to hear about your carbon footprint calculations. Our basic calculations have come to similar results, but we hope to get a professional evaluation done in the next weeks.
BTW: love your EarthRoamer. I dream come true, but a little out of our budget for now!
Let’s keep in touch…
All of my questions setletdthanks!
I have read with admiration and fascination your principles and ambitions for this trip and wish you every success with your goals. I regret only that your itinerary does not include Europe as I would have been very pleased to welcome you here at my home in Menorca (which is a Reserve of the Biosphere and is arguably the best Conserved and least developed island in the Mediterranean).
I was your father’s PA/Secretary at the time of your birth, Teresa, and hope that they and your brother and sister are thriving and may one day visit the Balearics? Please pass to them my very fondest regards.
I wish you and David many congratulations on your marriage and Good Luck and support in this great venture.
Dear Yvonne,
thank-you for your kind message.
Wonderful to hear that you were there when Theresa was born. Abu-Dhabi in the good old days. Theresa’s family is doing very well. Frauke and David are still in Abu-Dhabi, albeit retired. Nicolas is also working in AD. Miriam is married and commutes between Paris and Santiago de Chile (her husband is Chilean).
Stage 1 of our global expedition will actually take us through Europe, alas unfortunately not through Menorca. We hope to hit the road by the end of this month. Do follow us, and maybe there is a chance to meet up somewhere!
Thank-you for your kind support.
David
Dear David and Theresa, here is a link on plastic consumption in Dubai that I saw yesterday through google alerts: http://gulfnews.com/life-style/general/rubbish-fashion-look-stylish-in-recycled-plastic-1.999933
what is your emails please? look forward to keeping in touch with you on your travels and thanks so much for an inspiring meeting this morning…ciau, melanie
Hi Melanie,
thanks for sharing this.
Our emails are: theresa@pnsfexpedition.com and david@pnsfexpedition.com
Talk soon!
David