Like Rylee, don't wait for others to do it, take the initiative yourself.

Rylee woke up one morning with the sun, or rather, the sun woke her up because, come on, who can resist surfing when the sea winks at you? Well, she went with her board on her back, headed to the water, went to a piece of beach where the waves by some chance were always stronger and good for surfing, although there were always some seagulls that bothered you. Then she started paddling on the board to get to the area where those good waves were and when she was getting there she saw something that surprised her a lot, that whole good area was full of basara. A boat had thrown lots of plastic bottles and also the tide had brought a lot of trash from the beach shore. She felt frustrated to see that her day had been ruined because of this, because now she would not be able to surf in her favorite place. Also, she realized that at this rate the whole beach would be full of trash in a short time.

In the end she went back home, but very upset. That day she spent thinking about what had happened in the morning and how it would affect the lives of the locals if nothing was done about it. It was the best beach in the whole area for surfing and now it was unusable. In the afternoon she contacted the mayor of the town to let him know how upset she was about what was happening and to ask the local government to take action to fix the situation. In the end the mayor just said, yes, we will fix it when we can and hung up on her without further ado. That was when she realized that the mayor did not have much interest at that moment in solving the problem.

Seeing this inaction she thought that the best thing would be for the people of the town to take action, but that would not be easy because a large part of the problem was caused by themselves. That is why she came up with an idea to take the lead and perhaps people would follow her example or become aware of it and the importance of not throwing garbage into the sea. You see, Rylee has a small business that consists of making surfboards. For this, she has a small workshop where she hires several workers who build the best boards with high-quality wood. The idea that occurred to her was to expand the workshop a little more to begin making ecological boards made with recycled materials, that is, collecting trash from the sea, such as plastics, and then using them to build boards on a new line in the workshop.

Obviously, turning that idea into reality was like trying to make bread without a recipe. She had to spend weeks studying materials that could replace polyurethane and those chemical glues that NASA probably wouldn't even use. On top of that, she would also have to hire new staff because the ones she already had weren't used to working with those materials. She hired a man named Gus, he was a carpenter who was famous on the internet for knowing a lot about how to use recycled wood and plastics. Gus probably had more wood in his head than in his workshops, but he told him how they could use those available materials to use them together with the wood that was floating in the sea. After studying a bit, they realized that it was possible, at least in theory, to build boards out of 100 percent recycled materials.

By the way, Rylee's surfing friends started to comment negatively when they found out about this. "Eco-friendly? So what, are we going to surf on lettuce leaves now?" But she didn't let herself be carried away by these comments, she said to herself, "If I don't try it, who will?" That was the important thing, to raise awareness of the problem, she knew that if she didn't do it, those who were making fun of it would soon have nowhere to surf. So against this odds, the following week she put together a team in her workshop and created an entire division. First, some would be dedicated to collecting all the waste on the beach and storing it in a container to later use. And another part of the workers would be dedicated to converting this waste into useful materials to make the boards.

That's how it all began, although there was a lot of trial and error, because Gus wanted the board to meet the best standards so that the surfers in the area would feel motivated to buy these boards and stop using other boards that weren't ecological like these. 15 days later they had a prototype ready. Rylee decided to try it at an event she organized, invited her friends and the skeptics who had previously made fun of it, and of course the mayor too. Against all odds, the reactions were good, everyone had the opportunity to try the board in the water.

After everyone tried it and saw that the board was actually much better than other ones that were not ecological, they congratulated her and many others apologized to her for having made fun of her before. In fact, they even ordered some to buy. The mayor, seeing all the initiative she had done, did not know where to hide from shame because he knew that part of that situation was his fault for his inaction in taking measures. In the end, he told her that from now on he would worry more about what was in mind and that he would take measures. But you know, that was not all because some local businesses, seeing that they could do many more things than they thought with the garbage, wanted to join the initiative and told her that they would also begin to use those materials to collaborate.

Seeing all these reactions, she realized that her work to raise awareness was having an effect, as many people saw the need to stop throwing trash into the sea and others saw that it could be reused in their businesses. Even the local press now wanted to interview her. Over time, she managed to start a small production and organized workshops where she taught others how to surf without harming the planet. The impact of her work extended beyond her beach and many other companies began to follow her example and began to reuse and recycle trash to make their products. In the end, she never imagined that for a simple day that she couldn't surf, all those good things were happening and it was a good reward for her. Over time, her beach was clean and she was able to surf happily again.

Credits: The images used are free to use and royalty free. They were taken from pixabay.