We are Surfers Against Sewage
Together, we are the voice of the ocean
Surfers Against Sewage is a national marine conservation and campaigning charity that inspires, unites and empowers communities to take action to protect oceans, beaches, waves and wildlife.
We’re just like you – we love our oceans. We’d like to see them better protected for the future for everyone. We’re a charity that is focused on creating great community projects and campaigns that you can get involved with to do just this.
We create ocean activists everywhere for a thriving ocean and thriving people.
Connection with the Ocean
We were borne out of people’s visceral connection with the sea and their response to the pollution ruining our coastlines, whether that is sewage pollution or throwaway plastics. This direct connection with the ocean is what makes us unique and drives us in our mission for cleaner seas.
Surfers Against Sewage doesn’t describe exactly what we do anymore! Together, we’re much more than our name suggests. We’ve made great progress on cleaning up our beaches from sewage and the cleanliness of our seas remains in the DNA of the organisation. But our new priority issue is marine plastic pollution. We work on other issues too – climate change, water quality, coastal development, but plastic pollution is huge and needs a lot of attention!
How do we do this?
With you! Building a community through education, volunteering, beach cleans, campaigns, parliamentary events and advocacy to create the change we want to see for the future. Together we are a community of over 300,000 people united for our coastlines.
Successes & Challenges
Surfers Against Sewage supporters helped campaign for the plastic bag charge which has already taken out over 6 billion plastic bags from the environment!
Throwaway plastic pollution is SAS’s new sewage. 12 million tonnes of marine litter and plastic enter the oceans every year.
Million Mile Back Clean – in 2022, over 263,500 volunteers cleaned 1,043,916 miles across beaches, streets, rivers, parks and trails, removing a total of 738,494kg of rubbish.
Over 225,000 people joined us in calling for a deposit return system to stop plastic bottle pollution.
We are working with over 800 Plastic Free Communities across the UK and our Plastic Free Schools programme reaches over 1.2 million students
We also believe that waves and surf spots deserve to be seen as part of UK heritage and should be afforded greater recognition and protection through political debate and legislation.
How we work
We create volunteering opportunities for individuals and communities to be involved with activities to safeguard our seas, coastlines and beaches.
We talk to the government on key issues affecting oceans, beaches and recreational water users and advocate policies needed to deliver a cleaner and safer marine environment.
We educate communities on the achievable, sustainable solutions, which can help protect our waves, oceans and beaches.
We challenge industry to adopt better standards to protect our coastal environment.
We promote scientific, economic and health evidence to support calls for a cleaner and safer marine environment.
We engage the general public on issues affecting UK waves, oceans and beaches, and those that use them.
This is a local grassroots environmental charity that has come to fruition, and flourished, through the commitment, passion, belligerence and belief of some individuals who don’t take ‘no’ for an answer.
— Gary, SAS member