May 18th, 2018

The Volvo Ocean Race – including the ‘Turn the Tide on Plastic’ boat touched shore in the United States this week, taking the opportunity to highlight the issue of marine pollution in the State of Rhode Island.

Rhode Island celebrated the arrival off the Volvo Ocean Race’s arrival with an Ocean summit, an event aiming to bring together policymakers, ocean advocates, athletes, and private sector representatives to explore solutions for the problem of marine debris and plastic pollution.

“The problem of marine litter cannot be solved in isolation,” Lisa Svensson, Global Director for Ocean at United Nation Environment said during the summit.We must all work together - governments, the private sector, civil society and individuals - towards a permanent solution. We have no time to lose. It’s time to turn the tide on plastic!”

The Volvo Ocean race is the world’s longest and toughest professional sporting event, seeing 7 boats competing in a race that takes the sailors across 4 of the world’s 5 oceans, over the span of 9 months.

Previously, the Volvo Ocean Race has stopovers in (among others) South Africa, Hong Kong and Melbourne. The Race will finish in June 2018, in the Hague, Netherlands.
The ‘turn the tide on plastic’ features the youngest crew to ever compete in the race’s 45-year history. It is also the only boat that has mixed male-female crew. While battling the 6 other Volvo Ocean 65 class race boats, the boat and its crew help to draw attention to the mass of plastic pollution ending up in our oceans, in partnership with UN Environment’s CleanSeas campaign.

The CleanSeas campaign is calling on governments, industry and citizens to end plastic pollution by eliminating single-use plastics and micro-plastics in the next decades. So far 42 countries have joined the campaign.

Each year, at least 8 million tonnes of plastics makes its way into the oceans. Plastic never dissolves, it is simply broken up into smaller pieces, that are easily ingested by marine life. It is estimated that by 2050, 99% of seabirds will have ingested plastic particles.