Today, on Earth Day, EverWalk Proudly Launches Our New Initiative OceansCommit!

As you can imagine, spending most of my life immersed in the ocean, I fell madly in love with this blue jewel of a planet of ours.

When Bonnie and I finally became the first team to ever swim the epic ocean between Havana and Key West, we imagined leading masses of people in movement across the curvature of the earth, taking in the magic of the blue sky, envisioning who what we could do, who we could be.

And, voila, EverWalk was conceived.

Five years later, as we continue EverWalk events and web site expansion (such as our upcoming new Book Club on our new social network), and Facebook community, we are now both proud and excited to launch a new EverWalk initiative.

OceansCommit once again emanates from our love affair with the great outdoors. Like many of you, Bonnie and I have come to a high state of alarm and distress at the egregious amount of plastic, 8 tons per year, that now flows from land to sea all around the world.

And, like many of you, we have felt helpless to do anything about this affront to our home, planet earth.

Yet it has proven that even worldwide change can be achieved, is only achieved, by millions of us doing just one little thing. If each of us committed to significantly reducing single use plastic in our homes and our businesses, we could—and we will— restore our majestic oceans to their natural, pristine grandeur.

OceansCommit joins PlasticPollutionCoalition.org, a coalition of more than 1,000 organizations and critical thinkers worldwide, activists on the forefront of the campaign to reduce plastic pollution in our oceans.

And I’ve been named one of PPC’s “Notables”.

We look to the PPC for all our critical research, information, and contacts within the plastic pollution universe. 

Although we are clearly new to the oceans pollution fight, what distinguishes us from the other organizations is our past history and current belief that to spend time in the great outdoors is to become a planet earth devotee.

We are the only anti-plasticpollution organization that produces walking and swimming events with the express purpose of inspiring a long list of signature commitments to reduce single use plastic.

The Corona virus erupted at the precise moment that OceansCommit  was to launch our first event, a multi-day event with various lengths of walks and a one-mile ocean swim along the classic Southern California coast. And we have already completed the intel on a longer multi-day event the 300 miles from Jacksonville to Miami, with many choices of daily walks and swims.

The concept is to have all our Everwalkers and OceansCommit swimmers, along with virtual participants around the world, in addition to locals attending our daily beach rallies, go back to their homes and businesses and commit to their reduction of single use plastics.

It’s easy to compute:  We use less plastic. We create less plastic waste. There is less plastic flowing from land to sea, as it does now to the tune of eight million tons per years.

Our young environmentalist will be at the heart of our mission. Many of the daily swimmers will be age-groupers. It is our youth, witness Greta Thunberg, who are going to save the planet.

 We have named a 13-year-old in Miami, swimmer Austin Sayfie Aagaard, as our Youth Ambassador. Austin lectures elementary and junior high students on the mammoth plastic pollution of our oceans.

We will bring other kids to the stage at our beach rallies in various towns to express their passion of environment activism.

 Hundreds of youth swim clubs around the country will put in laps and sign the pledge during our swim down the coast—just as thousands of EverWalkers will walk with us from their respective trails and asphalt roads. And they will lead their families in joining the pledge commitment drive.

 

Once we are all of us safe to return to being together, we will announce our first OceansCommit event.

Come walk with us. Swim with us. Heal the Planet, Each One of Us One Small Action.

ONWARD!

About Diana Nyad: 

 A prominent sports journalist, filing for National Public Radio, ABC’s Wide World of Sports, The New York Times and others, Diana has carved her place as one of our compelling storytellers and sought-after public speakers. .