14/07/2025
Plastic free July 2025
6 years ago......
Many of you don't know my sand journey started with creating big sand sculptures as part of a international team of sand sculpters in an sandcastle competition/event called the Sun and Sea festival at Imperial Beach, Sand Diego, USA. It has run for 60 years and around 60,000 people visit over 2 days.
I first took part in 2016 and then went back again in 2019, exactly 6 years ago.
'Under the sea' was the theme and I was in a master sand scuptors team of 4. There were 8 teams in this year.
We decided to create a piece with the animals saying 'Thank you' for not using single use plastic shopping bags.
In NZ single use plastic shopping bags were banned from July 1st 2019.
Kate Gislason from WOW Without Waste has just come back from the USA recently and said the single use plastic shopping bags are still being used there. I've just looked on Wikipedia and it says only some States have banned them or imposed a fee for the bag.
Unbelievable really.🥲🐬🦭🐳
It made a massive impact here In NZ and very quickly people got used to bringing their own bags with them to the supermarket.
I was so proud to be a part of creating this wonderful sand sculpture.
It takes a day for the team to 'pound up' , putting all the sand and water into the wooden frames and compact the sand. There is no 'glue' used. I carried buckets of water from the sea to our creation for 5 hours while others shoveled the sand. It's a full on physical job.
The next day we sculpt. Starting at 8am to 2pm. The 4 of us create together. Two experienced sculptors Yessenia and Andrew measured and cut the sand at the very top , creating the plastic bag flying in the wind with the words 'Thank You'on it and then it was all hands on deck.
It's a real art to see a bigger perspective , more than 3d when your carving like this as each part of what you are doing is also part of the whole sculpture.
6 hours sounds like a long time to create. It's full on and you have a support team who gives you food and water and puts sunscreen on while you are creating so you don't have to get sand everywhere.
It's such and amazing achievement to see the final creation. I did most of the back, the manta ray, turtle, star fish and tidying up the back area.
We had the words 'Seas the day' at the front.
I was very grateful for my team welcoming me back and I loved my experience.
I'm loving being able to share this message now 6 years later and for us here in NZ to remember the difference we made then and can continue to make as a small country committed to keeping us clean and green.
Celebrating WOW Without Waste NZ and their commitment to reducing waste going to our landfills by using such wonderful initiatives such as reducing rubbish at festivals.
I was part of this last year and was blown away at the Global Games tournament Queenstown seeing how it all worked with Tyrone Campbell and Carla Rogers
Together we are strong ❤️❤️❤️❤️
