Lizzie Carr traveling down the Hudson River on her stand-up paddleboard. Max Guliani / The Hudson Project Lizzie Carr was navigating a stretch of the Hudson River north of Yonkers, New York, recently when she spotted it—a hunk of plastic so large and out of place that she was momentarily at a loss to describe it. The sloping side helped her put her finger on it: It was an outdoor playset, with a big slide attached. "Pink and yellow and blue, and just caught up on a rocky shoreline," she recalls. "Trapped, basically." As to how a piece of backyard debris may have ended up on the bank of one of the nation’s busiest and most scenic waterways, Carr could only wonder. "You’re thinking, how on earth did this get here? It came from somewhere, but I have absolutely no idea where." In fact, few people probably have more firsthand knowledge of the plastic pollution that clogs our waterways than Carr does. Days earlier, the Surrey, England–born athlete and activist had begun the latest in a series of long-distance endurance challenges undertaken on a stand-up paddleboard to bring attention to the contamination of rivers and streams. In 2016, she […]
Reading Time: < 1 minute
