Sky Ocean Rescue – a year of impact

‘Turn the Tide on Plastic’ boat partner Sky has reached the one-year anniversary of its ambitious Ocean Rescue campaign to spread the message about how plastic is affecting our oceans.

Sky have been helping the Volvo Ocean Race reach millions of people through their website and news channels.

Sky News presenter Thomas Moore also gave a talk at the Volvo Ocean Race Ocean Summit in Cape Town on the partnership and how the organisations are working together to reduce plastic pollution.

And over the past year, a massive nine million people have been made aware of the issues of ocean health through the campaign with over six million engaged on Sky’s social media channels. 

Highlights so far include:

• The removal of single use plastic water bottles from Sky offices and by giving each employee a refillable bottle they have saved approximately 450,000 single-use plastic bottles in a year

• Changes to how Sky Sports provide water to crew during outside broadcast productions resulting in savings of approximately 66,000 plastic bottles predicted.

• Sky Ocean Rescue café: Switching two litre milk bottle to 14 litre milk dispenser in their SOR Café will save half a tonne of plastic per year per café.

Sky is partnering with the Turn the Tide on Plastic boat led by the race’s only female skipper, veteran British sailor Dee Caffari MBE. 

The crew are using on-board data gathering equipment to measure water quality and composition, as well as microplastics in some of the world’s remotest oceans.

It was recently revealed that data collected by Dee and her crew found millions of micro plastic particles in the Atlantic and Southern Oceans.

Dee said: “Through a range of initiatives Sky Ocean Rescue is driving the plastic free agenda forward in the way it operates and with outreach to its customers.

“The partnership with Turn the Tide on Plastic is helping raise global awareness amongst over three million race visitors in 12 countries and millions more around the world.” 

At the EU Our Ocean Conference in Malta Sky pledged to transform its business operation and become single-use plastic free by 2020.

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