A single beach cleanup grew into Project Planet Earth, a community movement using school visits, beach cleans, and extraordinary swims to inspire people to take action for the ocean.
Project Planet Earth never set out to become a charity. It began with one person wanting a day off.
Back in June 2018, our founder, Oly Rush, was working long days as a plasterer while renovating his own house in the evenings. Running on empty, he took a rare day for himself and headed to a quiet cove on the Dorset coast, hoping to get in the water and clear his head.
There was no surf that day. What there was was plastic. And once he started looking, he couldn’t stop seeing it.
He could have gone home. Most days, most people do, and we don’t blame them. It’s a lot easier to look away than to look closer. But that day, Oly picked up a bag and started filling it.
That one small decision is the reason Project Planet Earth exists.
Oly still returns to that same stretch of coast, Chapman’s Pool, most weeks. Some people call him “The Human Fish” because he is rarely out of the water for long. What started as one bag on one beach has grown into a charity working across Dorset and beyond—and the beach cleans were only the beginning.
Plastic pollution can make people feel completely powerless. There are, by some estimates, 358 trillion microplastic particles floating in our oceans. That’s not a number a single person can do anything about. But a beach is. A classroom is. A single swim is.
That’s where we have put our energy: into things people can actually see, touch, and take part in. We run regular beach cleans along the South Coast and visit primary schools, reaching more than 25 schools so far and involving over 1,000 children. The idea is simple: if a seven-year-old understands why plastic in the sea matters, they can start making better choices long before they become adults.
Faced with 358 trillion microplastic particles in the world’s oceans, Project Planet Earth focuses its energy where people can actually make a difference, running beach cleans along the South Coast and visiting more than 25 primary schools to reach over 1,000 children with a simple message: understanding plastic pollution early leads to better choices for life. Photo courtesy of Project Planet Earth.
Our school visits are designed to be more than a talk about plastic pollution. Sessions are tailored for children aged five to eleven, using stories from Oly’s swims and environmental work to make the issue tangible.
We talk about practical things children can do in their everyday lives, but just as importantly, we give them space to ask questions and share their own ideas. The aim isn’t to frighten children with the scale of the problem. It’s to show them that they can be part of the solution.
We also use long-distance swimming to get people to stop and pay attention. Swimming around an island for a day and a half gets people’s attention in a way a leaflet never will. Oly has swum the length of the Jurassic Coast—100 miles over nine days—and around the Isle of Wight faster than anyone had before, albeit in a wetsuit. In 2022, he swam around Grand Cayman, completing a 37-hour, non-stop swim that earned a Guinness World Record. In 2023, he became the first person to swim around Ithaka in Greece. There is more to come.
But none of these swims was ever really about Oly or the records, although they make great stories to take into schools. For us, the real measure of those swims isn’t the distance. It’s what happens afterward.
A world-record swim might get someone to stop and watch, but the real opportunity comes when that attention turns into a conversation about plastic, the ocean, and what someone can do differently.
One of our favourite projects wasn’t even a swim. Glenn Martin built a 15-foot plesiosaur out of 800 plastic bottles collected from a beach on the Isle of Wight. Named Percy, the plastic creature was then towed through Loch Ness. It sounds daft, and it was. But children who might never think twice about a beach clean will absolutely stop and ask questions about a homemade Loch Ness Monster made from rubbish. Sometimes the best way to get people caring about something serious is to make them laugh first.
Here’s what still gets me, six-plus years in: it’s never really been about the kilos of rubbish—although we’ve pulled over 4,000kg since becoming a registered charity, and every bit of that matters. It’s what happens to the people who come along.
More than six years on, we’re still reminded that this work isn’t really about the kilos of rubbish—although we’ve collected more than 4,000 kilograms since becoming a registered charity, and every bit of that matters. It’s about what happens to the people who get involved.
One of our team members, Cathy, found us while looking for a charity to support her own Channel swim. She came to see what we were about and never really left. Now she’s part of the team. That happens more than people might expect. Someone turns up curious, a bit sceptical, or simply looking for a way to do something with their frustration, and they leave with a reason to keep showing up. Over time, those opportunities have multiplied.
Project Planet Earth has created more than 100 ways for people to engage with plastic-conscious living, from beach cleans and school visits to public events and awareness campaigns. The activities look different, but the purpose is the same: to give people a way to move from feeling concerned to actually doing something.
That’s the whole model. You don’t have to swim around an island or build a plastic monster. You have to do your bit, whatever that looks like for you. Every person who turns up to a cleanup, every child who asks a question after a school visit, and every person who changes a habit adds to something bigger than any one of us could do alone.
We’re still growing—still running cleans, still visiting schools, and still dreaming up the next mad idea to get people talking about plastic. If you’re near the Dorset coast, join us for a clean. If you run a school, we’d be happy to talk to your students. And if you want to follow along, we’re on Instagram, sharing the good days and the hard ones.
Project Planet Earth started with one bag on one beach, on a day Oly wasn’t even meant to be there.
We’re still picking up from where that first bag left off.
