Since the inception of the Town Haul Podcast, Rubicon® has had the honor and privilege to record content with some of the biggest brands and industry influencers in the world of environmental sustainability.
To celebrate World Oceans Day, we have compiled a list of 10 powerful quotes straight from the mouths of the experts to help educate and inspire both businesses and individuals to take a look at their behaviors and implement some crucial changes to help better our oceans.
On Establishing the Problems Plaguing Our Oceans:
“Eighty percent of what’s in the sea in terms of marine debris is at the ocean floor. We’ll never see it unless we head all the way down there and decide to clean it up at that level.” — Emma Riley, Director of Strategic Partnerships, Lonely Whale
“In the U.S. we use 500 million single-use plastic straws every single day, which really freaks me out because that comes down to 1.6 straws/person/day.” — Miles Pepper, Inventor and Co-Founder, Final Straw
“Ten percent of the world’s carbon footprint is coming from the textile industry. When you pull the curtain back, you also see 20 percent of the world’s fresh water pollution comes from textile treatment and dying.” — Marci Zaroff, Eco-Entrepreneur
“When plastics get into the ocean it gets into the food chain and ultimately to our dinner plates… if you’re a seafood eater you’re eating hundreds of bits of plastics annually.” — Brian Linton, Founder and CEO, United by Blue
“All of this plastic that we’re consuming as a society is now breaking down into these tiny pieces of plastic that are too small to filter out. And now it’s showing back up in the water that we drink and the food that we eat.” — Sarah Paiji-Yoo, Founder of Blueland
On How You Can Have a Direct Impact on Our Oceans:
“With almost every single oceans project we’ve worked on the issue of waste comes up. It speaks to the broader issue that needs to be addressed, which is mitigating the amount of waste that is coming into the ocean. You can have an impact on that by working with the businesses and initiatives that actually address the drivers of waste ending up in the oceans. But even individuals on a day-to-day basis can really make an effort to use a reusable water bottle and to stop producing so much waste, because so much of that waste—even when you’re working in a city—can end up in the oceans.” — Justin Winters, Executive Director of the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation
“Even if you don’t live near an ocean there are several things you can do to reduce marine waste; litter contributes to all of this ocean debris, it washes off into creeks and gets caught in stormwater and catch basins and ends up in rivers that flow into large bodies of water—not only is it an eyesore it’s a human health problem as well. Anyone can organize a community litter cleanup.” — Millicent Pitts, CEO and Executive Director, Ocean Exchange
“Instead of just reduce, reuse, recycle, the first step is refuse. If you refuse you say I don’t want single-use plastics, I refuse the water bottle.” — William McDonough, Author of Cradle to Cradle
“When we think about the oceans, there are definitely some best practices that need to be put in place and have been put in place to make sure we have a sustainable fish supply. It’s really about the best product and making sure that it’s going to be around for our grandchildren. We have done a lot of work there so we have fishery improvement projects underway in our local communities as well as abroad.” — Jason Wadsworth, Sustainability Manager for Wegmans
On the Importance of World Oceans Day:
“World Oceans Day is June 8 every year. It started in 1992 and it was suggested by Canada’s International Center for Ocean Development as a way to sort of unify the chatter about ocean health and ocean conservation solutions for the issues that are plaguing our seas. The world really has kind of come together on that day and used it as a platform to promote awareness of our ocean. Every second breath we take comes from phytoplankton in the sea. And people don’t realize that. People really do not realize that the ocean is dying and with it, we will face, as humanity, some very serious health and environmental issues in the future.”
“World Oceans Day really is an important platform for various organizations to draw attention to the importance of our ocean. We’re a blue planet and we need to continue to be or we will face some very serious, very scary, and very trying times in the near future. We’re nearly there now. “ — Emma Riley, Director of Strategic Partnerships, Lonely Whale
Amy Koonin Taylor is Marketing Content and Media Manager at Rubicon. To stay ahead of Rubicon’s announcements of new partnerships and collaborations around the world, be sure to follow us on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter, or contact us today.
