If you’re reading this, you probably consider yourself green, but are you also blue? A sister to the Green Movement, the Blue Movement, recognizes the significant role water plays on the planet by emphasizing the importance of protecting our oceans. The two movements are unique unto themselves and yet undeniably interconnected.
Shaped by an early understanding of the planet’s interconnectivity, Brian Linton founded United By Blue (UBB) to promote the well-being of our oceans. He explains rather bluntly that “without a healthy ocean we will die.” It’s an unsettling statement, but considering that 71 % of the earth’s surface is covered by oceans, it’s a certain one. And yet despite this sobering fact, millions of us continue to book trips “down the shore” and consume seafood without so much as a thought about what lies beneath the surface.
Failure to protect and treasure oceans as we do our green spaces may be attributed to the out of site out of mind mentality that has ruled the day for generations. Linton, however, refuses to accept society’s mental laziness, making the logical argument, “If you think about it, humans are the sole reason our oceans are filled with plastic and depleted of fish. So, if we are able to destroy our environment, we should be able to fix it.”
And fix it he is. To date, UBB has pulled 2,907 pounds of trash from waterways. (Earlier this month, some 627 pounds were removed from the banks of the Delaware River during a UBB/Philadelphia Cheerleader’s cleanup.) Cleanup efforts are funded by Sand Shack, Linton’s line of ocean-friendly organic bags, tee shirts and jewelry. For every item purchased, one pound of trash is removed from waterways. This for-profit enterprise allows them to literally “put their money where the ocean is.”
Linton and his volunteers have retrieved all kinds of things from waterways including food containers, condoms, diapers and feminine products. He calls plastic bottles and bags the “scourge of the oceans” and favors bans.
Like many entrepreneurial environmental leaders, Linton believes that capitalism is more powerful than politics. He explains that businesses are finding that there is money to be made by going green and blue. Despite their personal ideologies, business owners are doing right by the planet because, quite simply, it’s good business.
His own small business model is simple: don’t give money away. Linton elaborates, “As a small business owner it is great to support other causes, but you can do more good for the planet while growing your business by doing work within your company.”
In the future, Linton hopes to build a world-wide apparel brand from which proceeds will allow UBB to remove millions of pounds of trash from our waterways. With an estimated 14 billion pounds of trash being dumped in our oceans each year, Linton and UBB are swimming against the current; but as awareness for the Blue Movement grows, they’re likely to find cleaner seas ahead.
