Too Plastic Fundraiser

What:

1. Raise awareness to help stop plastic pollution in our oceans through a new, creative means: Kitesurfing.

2. Fundraise for Plastic Pollution Coalition, a nonforprofit that works to stop plastic pollution and its toxic impacts on humans, animals and the environment.

http://plasticpollutioncoalition.org/

3. Fundraise for East Hampton Volunteer Ocean Rescue

http://www.easthamptonoceanrescue.org/

Who:

25+ kitesurfers, volunteers, spectators

Where:

Hamptons, specified starting and landing locations to be determined

When:

Date range- Mid/Late August to end of September

Why:

The story behind this event begins in Panama. There I spent a month of my summer after freshman year in High School. I lived with a family, improved my Spanish immensely, helped to repair schools, and had an amazing adventure. One of the most memorable parts of the trip, which I will describe below, was spent on the San Blas Islands, a chain that runs along the coast of Panama.

The island I slept on was the size of a football field. I was surrounded palm trees, beach as white as winter snow and water that barely contrasted the bright blue sky under the beaming sun. Each night I fell asleep in a hammock between palm trees with rustling leaves, lapping waves, and crisp night air. I felt alive, I felt connected to the elements. In the mornings soon after the sun touched the Earth with warmth and light I woke, ate breakfast and hopped on a boat to a nearby island, Karti, to help repair the local school.

Karti, which was a tad larger than the island I slept on, was brimming over with huts made of dried palm tree leaves, and bamboo. The first day our boat pulled into the dock there, my eyes were immediately drawn to the sea floor, visible through the crystal clear water. An inordinate amount of trash made up what should have been sand coming up to the islands edge. The otherwise pristine environment was marred by plastic. This stuck with me.

After returning, my dad showed me a video of a recently invented machine that turns plastic into oil. This brought my mind back to the trash littering Karti. Suddenly I was thinking, what if you could turn all of that plastic garbage back into oil for use on the island? I reached out to the head of sales of the company who makes the machine and inquired about pricing and specifics. After hearing back that the machine cost $10,000 and the refiner which turned the crude oil into a usable form cost another large sum of money, my thoughts turned to fundraising. I live in a place that is surrounded by water and consequently my main activities are kite surfing and surfing. Having seen the success of other fundraisers involving water sports I thought it would be an awesome idea to wrap kite surfing into a fundraiser. At this point my dad recommended that I start by attempting to raise a relatively small sum of money for a local cause with the intention of eventually morphing the idea into a larger fundraiser involving plastic pollution in the oceans. This past October I was the first person to kite surf across a stretch of approximately twenty two miles of open ocean from the tip of long island to block island. The local cause I chose was East Hampton Volunteer Ocean Rescue for whom I raised $5,850. The Squad provides an invaluable service to our community and kite surfers who use the waters near East Hampton year around. This downwinder is the next step in what will hopefully become an annual Hamptons Kitesurf event.