Not long ago, I was talking to a young college student and excellent surfer amongst other things. Mitchell told me that his friend was taking a video shot of him surfing and coming through the tube of the surf zone, a perfect shot. Unfortunately in the picture was a piece of trash following the wave around him which was visible, and it kind of ruined the whole thing. Had it just been a digital picture, someone could have merely photo-shopped it out of the scene. Okay so, let’s talk about this, because Mitchell and I had a nice thought.
Why not create an iPhone App game, something like Angry Birds, but this one would be surfing around trash in the ocean. The object of the game would be to stay on balance, but also grab pieces of trash as you (actually your avatar in this case) go, and put these pieces of trash in your back-pack wetsuit bag. You get points for every piece of trash you pick up, and deposit into the beach trash can. You also get points anytime you tell someone to pick up the trash they threw out.
Now then, we decided it would be wise to sell this app online for $.99 and half of the money would go to the Surfrider Foundation for their work in beach clean-up awareness. Why? Because, Mitchell’s experience that day surfing should not have never occurred. No one in the US or anywhere on this planet should be throwing trash anywhere that it might get into the ocean. Just as we paint on storm drains “this water leads to the ocean” folks need to understand that trash in the sea is unacceptable.
If such an app was even one-tenth as popular as the Angry Birds game app, the amount of awareness and good that could be done would be enough to put an end to trash in the surf. If you look up “the Pacific Gyre” on YouTube you will begin to see just how serious this problem is in the world. You might also wish to look up; “trash island – Gulf of Mexico” because once you learn how bad things are.
Indeed, I am sure you’d agree to pay one-dollar for a cool iPhone game app of a Surfing Avatar collecting trash while riding a wave. So, I hope you will please consider all this and think on it. If you have any more comments or questions, please shoot me an email.