Personal Blog of Ellen MacArthur

I tend to always travel with a plastic bottle in my bag which I fill up wherever I am with tap water. Its sometimes a challenge to hang on to it though! The problem is that if you leave an empty bottle in a hotel room it is immediately classed as rubbish and whisked away when the room us cleaned. You have to resort to hiding your bottle somewhere! This I find frustrating, and though people are just doing their job it’s an example of how our instincts can be wasteful…

Waste, waste and more waste!! Today really had us thinking in the office when a group of us went to island waste on the isle of wight to see what happens to all of our rubbish on the island, and where it ends up?

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The first two weeks in October I was away on a bit of a holiday. Not surprisingly it involved boats, and a bit of sailing - but surprisingly it was on the inland waterways of Great Britain!

The goal was to try to paddle a collapsible canoe for roughly 300 miles to circumnavigate the industrial heartland of Great Britain. I adapted the canoe to sail and be steered, and fashioned a sailing rig from some fibreglass tent poles. I made a tent on the old Singer sewing machine that my Mum made her wedding dress on, and enjoyed the preparation as much as the journey itself. I love making things! It also brought back many memories of my childhood as I spent hours on the floor using that same machine making everything from my first pair of sailing trousers, to the cover for the life-ring on my second little boat.

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I was sitting in a busy cafe the other day full of commuters. I made a few interesting observations… One was that you could have your drink in a mug which in my opinion always tastes a bit better anyway, and certainly as the winter draws in it makes you think of being back at home after working outside, holding the sides of a mug with your cold hands to warm them up again.

Also available in the same cafe were disposable cups and just watching the number which were being collected from the tables in one cafe, in one hour was incredible.. My mind boggled as I day-dreamed of just how many cups that was, when multiplied by every cafe in the world just how many stadiums must be filled on an hourly, or is it on a minute basis!?

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