Volvo Ocean Race

This weekend I was lucky to be able to head down to the Auckland Viaduct, joining the other 250,000 people who came through the week to check out the Volvo Ocean Race Village. It was a fantastic atmosphere and awesome to be able to get right up close to the boats as the crew were preparing them for the trip across the Southern Ocean. What’s all this got to do with rubbish? Well, plenty as it turns out!

The Volvo Ocean Race organisation is placing a lot of emphasis this year on highlighting the issue of rubbish in the oceans through the Keep the Oceans Clean campaign. In the village they had a large area dedicated to education, displays and products aimed at addressing this issue. We were able to grab a drink Anna and Mick from Go Bamboo who were there promoting their fantastic toothbrushes, (available here), and were joined by Joao Parrinha, one of the artists with Skeleton Sea.

Skeleton Sea are traveling to each of the stopover ports of the race where they go out and collect rubbish from the local beaches and then run workshops enabling people to turn this waste into art. Traveling with them is a giant Flip Flop Fish made out of jandals collected in just one hour from a beach in the Canary Islands.