Ep. 832: Kayaking the Mississippi River in Search of Plastic - Christian Shaw
Adventure Sports Podcast
Curt Linville
4.6 • 579 Ratings
🗓️ 24 May 2022
⏱️ 51 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Christian is a waterman, adventurer, and storyteller discovering a path to make an impact in the world at the intersection of passion and purpose. Shaw is a teacher by nature and is passionate about sharing his skills and knowledge while inspiring others to join the movement for a healthier planet through his non-profit, Plastic Tides.
After realizing the devastating impact that plastic “nurdles” can have on a river system and the a proposed plastic manufacturing facility being built on the banks of the Mississippi River, Christian decided to travel to Louisiana to spend 10 days paddling 150 miles on the Mississippi from the proposed site of Formosa Plastics in St. James Parish to the mouth of the river to replicate the path these plastic nurdles would take.
The journey was documented and shared in real time through our social media channels which allowed them to foster support for #StopFormosaPlastics.
Learn more about Christian and Plastic Tides below:
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey, folks, welcome to the Adventure Sports podcast. My name is Mason. I'm the host, and today we're talking to Christian Shaw, who I love these kinds of episodes because I got started in the adventure world by doing adventures that were also purpose driven, like whether it's raising money for something. And you might say, oh, that concept has been just beat to death. But I think it's a great concept to do an adventure or do |
| 0:38.6 | some challenge in an effort to make the world a better place. Christian is paddling the Mississippi |
| 0:44.9 | River on a paddleboard, 150 miles of it, along the Louisiana border to spend 10 days |
| 0:53.0 | paddling the Mississippi River near the proposed site |
| 0:56.3 | of Formosa plastics. And what Christian is doing, he is trying to basically stop them or get some |
| 1:05.0 | sort of awareness around the fact that these plastic plants release a ton. Unfortunately, that's not even close to literal |
| 1:15.1 | tons and tons of plastic residue, these things called nerdals, which are small pieces of |
| 1:22.3 | plastic that they use to melt and then shape things. Those nerdals just get dumped into rivers, like thousands upon |
| 1:28.8 | thousands upon thousands of them every day, if not millions of them a day. And it just these little |
| 1:33.9 | plastic beads that just fish eat and all this terrible stuff. But Christian is just trying to bring |
| 1:40.8 | awareness to this stuff and he's doing it through adventure. So I appreciate that. He's it for a long time so i hope you learned something i hope you get inspired to do something and |
| 1:49.5 | i'm always i'm always for folks who are trying to make the world better especially through the |
| 1:55.5 | means of adventure so christian thank you for coming on sharing your story you can learn more about |
| 2:00.5 | christian and his story at plasticastictides.org, as well as at Plastic Tides |
| 2:06.0 | or at Chris Cross Shaw, all on Instagram. |
| 2:10.2 | But yeah, go ahead and check that out. |
| 2:12.1 | Enjoy the episode. |
| 2:13.3 | Let's jump in. |
| 2:19.1 | All right, folks. |
| 2:20.3 | Well, welcome to Adventure Sports Podcast. |
| 2:23.0 | Today, we are talking to Christian Shaw about, man, something that's pretty interesting. |
| 2:29.3 | I'm excited to get into it. |
... |
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