Having a whale of a time on the Thames!

A bunch of wonderful employees from Fox Networks walked 3km to help clear plastic on the Thames!

It was a beautiful bright and sunny day in Hammersmith, perfect timing for the final GoodGym 21CF Impact Week event!

Yesterday we headed out for a delightful walk along the Thames to the Crabtree pub to pick up plastic and other litter from the shoreline. We were greeted by the lovely Carolyn from The Whale Company who gave us all a little insight of what was to come and told us her story of how her and her partner raised awareness of the issue by paddling 12 marathons in 12 countries on their paddle boards made out of plastic bottles! Incredible!!

After handing out gloves, bin bags and litter pickers, we jumped/clambered/crawled over the wall to get to the waterside and immediately got stuck in! It was quite amazing how much stuff there was. What I personally found most surprising was the amount of micro-plastic... you could literally just sit there for days sifting it out, there was that much of it, and sadly that is the kind of stuff that gets eaten by seabirds and marine animals resulting in millions of deaths each year. Apparently there are more pieces of microplastic in our oceans than there are stars in our galaxy.... CRAZY!!!!!!

We had 30 minutes to clear as much as possible. We cleared a lot of the immediate area fairly quickly so a few people branched out past the sludge and hit the jackpot around the corner. There were so many plastic cups, bottle tops, lollipop sticks, straws, plastic bottles... they came back with quite the haul!

After half an hour we regrouped and sorted the plastics from the general waste, took a nice big group shot and then headed back to the office after another good deed accomplished!

Great job yesterday everyone. It was lovely to meet you all and well done for getting so stuck in and getting so much done. I know I will definitely be thinking twice next time I buy a bottle of water, having picked up about 50 bottle tops! I hope you enjoyed your week of GoodGym runs and walks. Remember to have a look on the GoodGym website for group runs like this in your area, they happen every week in the evenings so there are loads more opportunities for you to get fit while good! Hopefully see you at a GoodGym run soon!