CHIEF WHALE – Carolyn Newton

The founder and Chief Whale of The Whale Company was born in South Africa and spent much of her childhood in Kinshasa, Congo before living in Paris, UK and Germany. Carolyn is an enthusiastic, vivacious character who lives life to the full. Her love of travel, nature and adventure has taken her to many parts of the globe: kayaking in New Zealand; safari in Kenya; climbing in Chile; whale watching in Canada; diving in Egypt and meditating in Bali.

Passionate about education; Carolyn began her professional career as a primary school teacher and went on to work as a tutor for children with special educational needs and assessor for a top tutoring firm.

Carolyn set up The Whale Company (Whale Bags Ltd.) in 2007 after learning that plastic was devastating the oceans; she read an article about a whale that had died from ingesting plastic and decided to take action – determined to help people stop using plastic bags she designed her organic cotton bags as alternatives. Over the last ten years the company has evolved as Carolyn has brought all her passions (education, protecting the environment, sport and travel) together to create the _Plastic Bottle SUP Project._

Carolyn believes by turning passion into action you can bring about positive change in the world.

CREATIVE INNOVATOR – Carlos De Sousa

Carlos was born and bred in São Paulo, Brazil, where he trained and worked as a P.E teacher, specialising in working with children with Special Educational Needs (SEN). In 2005 Carlos moved to the UK where he spent the next eleven years – he fell in love with London, despite the weather! It was in London where he first experienced paddle boarding and completed his first marathon on the Thames, after only four sessions. Carlos loves building things from recycled materials and after building his first paddle board out of plastic bottles, he came up with the idea to complete a marathon on a plastic bottle board to raise awareness of plastic pollution and to make SUP accessible to all.

DOCUMENTARY FILMMAKER – Eleanor Church

Eleanor has been producing documentary films and photo stories for nearly 15 years. With a background in documentary, investigative and creative filmmaking and photography, the projects that she has worked on have taken her across the UK and the world. Eleanor works on a variety of projects, both documentary and commercial, with a particular interest in stories that focus on society, environment, women, human rights, migration and supply chains. Her work has been shown on The Guardian, Al Jazeera, the BBC, Spanish national TV, at the US State Department, a number of high profile UN and international meetings and at exhibitions and film festivals

North Pacific Expedition

Eleanor is going to be sailing 3000 nautical miles across the North Pacific in June 2018 with a formidable all-women crew as part of Exxpedition. Over three weeks, they will travel from Hawaii to Vancouver through the densest ocean plastic accumulation zone on the planet, the North Pacific Gyre (better known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch). Why? They will each be doing some form of research – scientific, design-based, creative… looking at the impacts of plastics on the health of the planet and also our bodies. Eleanor will be making a feature documentary film for a global audience about the expedition and the issues, with a strong focus on how microplastics are affecting our health, to make people think about this like they never have before – and to look towards solutions.

Everyday Superheroes Film

In the build up to her expedition across the North Pacific, Eleanor is going to make the coolest, snappiest, happiest, most colourful one minute film to inspire people to make simple changes to their everyday routine to reduce their plastic waste. It’s going to be amazing. If you’d like to find out more, or pledge your support to the project head over to the kickstarter page here!