Ahead of the Surfers Against Sewage Plastic Free Awards (November 21), we caught up with CEO Hugo Tagholm to find out more about the plastic-free movement, the importance of getting big business on board and how he came to be an environmental activist.

Oceanographic Magazine (OM): When did you first connect with the ocean?

Hugo Tagholm (HT): I’m an environmentalist before being a surfer. Perhaps some of my earliest memories of the ocean are being on holiday with my parents, looking for things in rock pools or lakes. I was consistently fascinated and captivated by anything I found. When I was a kid I had a  bedroom at home that was filled with all of these natural artefacts and books, which I called The Collection. I’m a Londoner born and bred – now happily transposed and thriving in Cornwall. My dad used to take me and my brothers mud larking on the banks of the Thames looking for clay pipes, pottery, coins and all sorts of stuff. The Thames is a tidal river and people often forget that really the capital is a coastal city. It’s very connected with the ocean via this great river.

OM: Do you think people have become disconnected from the ocean?

HT: I think it’s actually a wider malaise in society. I think people are disconnected, not just from the ocean, but from the environment in general. Our strap line at Surfers Against Sewage is: ‘thriving ocean, thriving people’ and I think that the truth is that people see themselves as part of the human species but separate from nature – when we’re not. It’s an interdependent system where, if nature fails, we fail.

OM: How do you think the narrative around plastic needs to change?

HT: Plastic pollution is a really interesting topic and it’s been an incredible gateway for the public to engage with environmentalism. Because plastic, in particular damaging single-use plastics, are prolific in all of our lives. We all use them every day in some form or other. We need to see a narrative that pushes industry to start producing less plastic in a radical way. We’ve seen shocking statistics this year. Despite the amazing plastic-free communities, the refill movement and all of these attempts at reducing waste, plastic water bottle production continues to rise another 8% this year. The plastic-free movement needs to be a replacement and we need to see the bell curve starting to come down on plastic production. Forecasts don’t indicate that that will happen anytime soon so we need to redouble our efforts.

Plastic isn’t a bad thing, it’s an incredible and versatile substance. So we need to work out both how we eliminate it and replace it with truly more sustainable alternatives. But we also need to work out how we control, contain and properly recycle the plastics that we have in our society. Not offshoring them to far off countries. What we need to do is create a recycling system that truly is circular, that creates high value products that can be used time and time again. Finally, we need to shorten the plastic miles that are now embedded in the broken recycling systems that we have.