In a past life, I was filming pro skateboarding, snowboarding and BMX, which led me to breaking my leg. Instead of a wheelchair, I went out and I got my first kayak. Out here fishing on these rivers, you see just how big this plastic problem is and how it’s affecting our natural and recreational resources.
Originally, picking up trash along the river was a solo effort. But as I started posting what I was doing on Instagram, more and more people started expressing interest in coming along to help. So I started Trash Fish. Basically, I have a fleet of kayaks that are available for free for volunteers to come down to the Cuyahoga River and clean up the plastic out there. You get to learn a little something about our river and maybe a little bit of science and ecology, too.
You’d be surprised how many adults don’t know that plastic is a petroleum product - it’s essentially the waste product of our fossil fuel industry. And that’s eye-opening to a lot of people. The Cuyahoga River feeds the drinking supply of like 12 million people, so everyone that comes out here is serving a massive community, and the conversations that we’re having about the state of our natural resources are getting shared with friends on land.
Trying to be a better consumer is hard. But if you buy a little bit less plastic every day, and you’ll be doing more to keep plastic out of this river than you would doing the work that I’m doing. What is seen as radical today is going to be common in a few years, when people have to start facing the detriment that all of this is causing our planet. I’m proud of the work that we’ve done and I’m proud of the community that we’re building.
Originally, picking up trash along the river was a solo effort. But as I started posting what I was doing on Instagram, more and more people started expressing interest in coming along to help. So I started Trash Fish. Basically, I have a fleet of kayaks that are available for free for volunteers to come down to the Cuyahoga River and clean up the plastic out there. You get to learn a little something about our river and maybe a little bit of science and ecology, too.
You’d be surprised how many adults don’t know that plastic is a petroleum product - it’s essentially the waste product of our fossil fuel industry. And that’s eye-opening to a lot of people. The Cuyahoga River feeds the drinking supply of like 12 million people, so everyone that comes out here is serving a massive community, and the conversations that we’re having about the state of our natural resources are getting shared with friends on land.
Trying to be a better consumer is hard. But if you buy a little bit less plastic every day, and you’ll be doing more to keep plastic out of this river than you would doing the work that I’m doing. What is seen as radical today is going to be common in a few years, when people have to start facing the detriment that all of this is causing our planet. I’m proud of the work that we’ve done and I’m proud of the community that we’re building.