Once Isn’t Enough For Steph Gilmore

Single use plastics are an environmental burden; we run into them each and every day, but most of the time they’re avoidable.

But what’s that? Enviro-aware surfers are hypocrites since boards, planes and cars all negatively impact the Earth? 

Well, maybe you have a point.

Okay, so we’re not going to win a Nobel Peace Prize, but we still like celebrating incremental positive change. If it’s good enough for the greatest ever female to stand on a surfboard, we’re also up for changing our habitual single-use plastic consumption.

There’s a lot of grey area when it comes to environmental action. We print magazines, we catch planes and use fossil fuels to keep us warm, but we shouldn’t give up on it all just because we’re not perfect.

A little bit of hypocrisy is better than doing nothing at all.

What surfers lack in environmental action in many aspects we can make up for when the products in question are avoidable. We can’t realistically avoid burning fuel between surf spots and chewing through non-recyclable boards, but we can avoid the plastic products we all use daily: coffee cups, plastics bags, plastic water bottles and even the link to your drink.

It’s easy to end up with a kitchen drawer full of bags, backseat full of bottles and bin full of coffee cups, but it’s just as easy to avoid them altogether.

Think of the difference you can make by eliminating your years worth of coffee cups from landfill or buying two totes and never using a plastic bag for groceries again. One person’s impact might not quite save the world, but hell, if they cut it out and a couple of their friends follow suit, that’s a positive change in our books.

Australians use 1 billion coffee cups per year, only 6.6% of plastic bottles are made from recyclables and a plastic bag takes 240 times longer to naturally degrade than paper.

We’re therefore getting behind Corona’s initiative to cut down on single-use plastics and Steph Gilmore is too. It might not save the world, but it won’t make it any worse.

If you too want to have a plastic free dig, then make a Corona plastic free pledge on their site (here), you’ll be doing a good deed and find yourself in the draw to win a trip for two to the Corona Bali Pro at Keramas in May! While you’re there you will get to watch the entire WSL comp and also take part in a few local beach clean ups.

You can head to the Corona site for information on how to pledge and what you can win here!