Surfers Against Sewage is an environmental charity established in 1990 by surfers in Cornwall to improve water quality. They campaign on issues like marine litter, sewage pollution, toxic chemicals, and coastal development through community action, volunteering, education, and research. SAS is funded through donations and run by voluntary trustees. They have successfully campaigned against issues like plastic pellets called "Mermaid's Tears" on beaches and helped implement solutions through partnerships with plastic manufacturers. Their ongoing goals include further reducing marine pollution and protecting coastal environments.

1. Name: Olivia Bolt
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2. The client: Surfers Against Sewage
Overview of the client.
Who are they, when did they start, why did they start, what do they
do, how are they funded?
Surfers Against Sewage is an environmental charity protecting the UK’s oceans, waves and beaches
for everyone to enjoy safely and sustainably. They do this through community action,
campaigning, volunteering, conservation, education and scientific research. These projects target
coastal environmental issues including marine litter, sewage pollution, climate change, toxic
chemicals, shipping, industry and coastal development. SAS established in 1990 on the north coast
by a group of passionate local surfers. There aim was to improve water quality nationally. In the
early 1990’s SAS became a highly effective catalyst for change, pressing on these key pieces of
legislation, collating health evidence and connecting previously disparate groups of surfers into
what became one of the best-recognized environmental campaign movements of the 1990s.
Surfers Against Sewage is managed by a board of voluntary trustees. They are responsible for
safeguarding the aims, objectives of this campaign. Trustees receive no remuneration and there
are no payments to shareholders. They fund this campaign through raising money and donations.

3. The issues:
Your client advocates on a number of different yet related issues.
What issues your client campaign on?
The SAS focus on many important issues that occur with beaches. They have picked issues in which are
very vital to the beach environment and keeping in clean. The SAS project target issues such as marine
litter, sewage pollution, climate change, toxic chemicals, shipping, industry and coastal development.
These are all very vital issues that are effecting the environment drastically.
What are some of the impacts they have managed to achieve?
So far the SAS have got many campaigns on the go that have proved to be affected have they have been
winning awards for them and they have been making an impact. The Mermaid’s tears campaign won the
BBC coastal awards. The UFO campaign has proved quite effective and has made impact. Throughout
beaches in the UK many unknown objects float in the waves close to the coast called UFOS as they are
unidentified objects and they become a danger to people surfing and also marine animals. Through the
work of beach cleaning and making people more aware of these ‘UFO’s’ and dropping object in the sea
they have reduced the amount of UFO’s found. This has also reduced the amount of pollution that is being
swept on the beach and caused dangers to marine animals.
Another impact that the SAS has managed to achieve would be The Mermaid tears. This is what the won
awards for. Mermaid’s tears are one of the most common. These are litter items on UK beaches. They are
raw material from plastic products. These are a problem in the environment. Once in the sea they can
increased in toxicity as they absorb aquaphobic chemicals, carcinogenic and PCB’s. As mermaids tears
resemble fish eggs the SAS are concerned that they no only are polluting beaches that they can be a
potential danger if entering the food chain.
What are they still hoping to achieve?

4. The issues:
Mermaids Tears continued…
In June 2009 Clean water campaigners from Surfers Against Sewage (SAS) are joined by mermaids in
celebrating a campaign victory for World Environment Day. With the release of BPF operation clean sweep
SAS had indentified these mermaids tears on beaches in abundance all over the UK and exposed plastic
factories as a source of this pollutant. SAS initially highlighted the problem of mermaid’s tears on UK
beaches to the BPF in 2007. SAS delivered a bottle of 10,000 mermaid’s tears, collected from 1 Cornish
beach, to a BPF biopolymer seminar. SAS also released a covert film documenting mermaid’s tears in the
storm drains of plastic factories in the southwest, highlighting the route from factory to beach. SAS and
the BPF have worked together on the OCS solution. SAS has already signed up Contract, one of the
southwest’s largest plastic factories to pilot some of the improvements within OCS. This is how they
pushed this campaign and made the impact they have of reducing and aborting the amount of mermaids
tears that were found on the beach.
What are they still hoping to achieve.
There are quite a few more issues in SAS are wanting to achieve.
Protect our waves petition.
On October 2013, SAS campaigners were accompanied by Ben Howard to deliver the POW petition to NO
10.

5. Facts and figures:
Use this space to highlight key facts and figures related to this project. These
could be very useful later on in your project as you try to raise awareness.