Kiwi charity Sustainable Coastlines has revealed its latest Adshel campaign. And it’s intended to shock Kiwis into thinking about the unexpected places our rubbish could end up.
The campaign features a disturbing photo of the decomposing remains of a bird with ts stomach filled with pieces of plastic. And it has been designed to challenge the way people think about and deal with their rubbish in New Zealand.
Sustainable Coastlines is one of eleven New Zealand charities that Adshel pledged to support in the 2009 Adshel Christmas promotion. The charity is committed to making positive, real and long-term changes to local coastlines and communities, globally. It provides ideas, coordination and support to communities to initiate, pursue and take ownership of local projects that will help improve their particular coastal environment.
The campaign, affectionately known as ‘Albie’, has gone up on fifty Adshel sites in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch. And Camden Howitt, marketing manager at Sustainable Coastlines, hopes it will raise awareness around the terrible effects of litter that makes its way onto our New Zealand beaches and into our oceans.
“The bottle caps, cigarette lighters, drinking straws and all other manner of disposable plastic products that we drop on our streets, can very quickly end up out at sea and on our beaches,” Howitt says. “Once trash gets into the coastal and marine environments it can have devastating effects on wildlife.”
US based-photographer Chris Jordan provided the compelling image, while Pitstop, Benefitz and HVG also contributed to make the campaign possible.
Sustainable Coastlines is calling for donations to help fund its ongoing work on projects to sustain and protect coastlines around New Zealand and the world. Supporters can make a $3 donation towards their work by simply texting TRASH to 2477. For more information people can also visit the Sustainable Coastlines website www.sustainablecoastlines.org or check out the Facebook page.
Adshel is committed to supporting not-for-profit organisations as a part of their community and environment programmes and, over the past five years, has provided more than $10 million in free media space to culture organisations and charities across New Zealand and Australia.
