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Drayton Pledges Support to Local Marine Conservation Charity

As part of our annual selected charity pledges, Drayton has made a donation to local marine conservation charity, Fathoms Free, a group run entirely by volunteers working tirelessly to remove plastics and other debris from UK waters, and campaign for better treatment of our coastlines.

 

Sustainability at Drayton

In helping to protect our local environment and slow climate change, we all must take responsibility for our actions. Since 2018, As well as designing products like Wiser that help you Save Energy at Home, Drayton has made tackling plastic pollution a priority, by creating a Single Use Plastic (SUP) committee to identify where we can reduce our SUP use and find more sustainable alternatives.

Thanks to our SUP elimination team and deploying zero-plastic alternatives, we’ve already saved over 11 tonnes of SUP from our Plymouth site from being used annually, and our site continues to operate zero-to-landfill, with 100% of our waste materials being reused or recycled elsewhere.

As part of the design and manufacturing industry, we’ve put sustainability at the core of everything we do, and it’s our duty to be part of the solution, not the problem. As well as our efforts to prevent further plastic pollution, we want to support local environmental projects that actively remove plastics already harming the environment.

 

Fathoms Free – Tackling Ocean Debris

Fathoms Free are a UK charity chaired by our very own John Kent, Senior Mechanical Design Engineer at Drayton who, when not working on our core product lines including Digistat and TRV4, is an experienced diver and activist using his engineering expertise to find innovative ways to remove debris from our seas and recycle it into something less wasteful.

John and the team of volunteer marine conservationists take part in 4 key campaigns:

  1. GHOST FISHING GEAR – The name given to fishing nets and equipment that’s either accidentally lost or intentionally abandoned. These keep fishing long after being lost, indiscriminately entangling all types of marine animals from crustaceans to whales. Fathoms Free works with industrial fishing bodies to recover ghost fishing gear and prevent future problems. Find out more about ghost fishing gear.
  2. DIVE AGAINST DEBRIS – The only underwater debris data collection program. Run via local volunteer divers their invaluable findings help inform policy change. Find out more about Dive Against Debris.
  3. PADDLE FOR PLASTIC – Some coastlines may look clean, but behind outcrops and amongst the rocks, debris builds up. Thanks to volunteer kayakers, plastic is being removed from even the hard to reach areas. Fathoms Free even recycles plastic removed from the ocean into new kayaks to help collect more litter! Find out more about Paddle for Plastic.
  4. AWARENESS – Prevention is always better than cure, so Fathoms Free holds talks, attends public events and curates art shows based around marine plastic pollution, to help stop debris reaching the sea in the first place through its educational campaign. Find out more about the marine plastic awareness campaigns.

 

Look familiar?

You may have spotted Fathoms Free recently on BBC2’s Cornwall with Simon Reeve in September 2020, watch the clip here to see the Fathoms Free team in action as they remove a colossal 200m ghost net from Cornish waters, and find out more about the harmful impact of ghost nets.

 

How To Get Involved

Have a passion for protecting our seas? You can sign up as a member of Fathoms Free, join the team in events like beach cleans later in the year, or you can make a donation via the website.

Have you spotted discarded fishing gear on our coastline? You can report ghost fishing gear here and Fathoms Free will investigate.

 

Fathoms Free are a registered UK charity number 1192613