Sally Earthrowl Speaker | Teen Speakers & Lifestyle & New Speakers & Assemblies and Celebrations Events & Well-being & Humanities & Conference & Climate Change

Sally Earthrowl

The issue of plastic pollution and the causes on land

Tales from mid-ocean adventures shine a light on the issue of plastic pollution, and highlight the solutions we can all work towards.

Sally is a keen environmentalist, adventurer and ocean advocate. When living in Indonesia she saw first-hand the devastating impact and upstream issues around plastic pollution. This propelled her to take action, working closely with the local community to educate and bring about change in local waste management systems and behaviours.

Curious to find out more, this led her to cross oceans with eXXpedition: an organisation running all-female sailing voyages carrying out scientific research at sea and advocating for change.

Sailing through the North Pacific Garbage Patch Sally was shocked to see plastic bottles and even a toilet seat floating past on the ocean currents, miles away from land. What was more alarming were the thousands of pieces of microplastic (plastic fragments that are smaller than your little fingernail) that were collected in the surface trawl samples. Sally now leads these voyages around the world and in the online domain, continuing to connect and collaborate with the all-female crews and stakeholders to make a positive difference.

At the heart of her mission is to educate and inspire people to want to take action. Encouraging everyone to recognise their own role in the solutions and enact change in whatever sphere of influence they have available to them.

Alongside her 12-year career as a geography teacher Sally is a Chartered Geographer and National Geographic Certified Educator. As an experienced public speaker and workshop facilitator, Sally has spoken at international conferences, universities and in classrooms around the world, sharing her tales of adventure and understanding of the issues relating to the health of our ocean.

Testimonials from Teachers

"The combination of teaching experience and the first-hand experience of witnessing plastic pollution out at sea, meant that Sally had the students fully engaged and propelled to take action! The clarity of the problem from the presentation and videos, meant that there was visible shock and a wide feeling of sadness - but through the energy of the presentation, and the inspiring words on research and solutions, our students ended up inspired and energised to bring better for the world."

– Jonathan Cherry, Headteacher, Dyatmika School, Bali.

"The children, and staff, absolutely loved your talk and were totally buzzing afterwards. One child told me she wants to be just like you when she’s older, and kept a huge smile on her face for the rest of the afternoon. They were so excited to tell everyone what they had learnt and take action...we all feel inspired!"

– Kelly hand-Davis, Primary School Teacher, West Wittering School.

"It was a brilliant and informative talk and the pupils really engaged well. We all learnt a lot from you and your first-hand experience – thank you"

– Jane Taylor, Geography teacher, Magdalen College School, Oxford.