It all started with a treasure hunt and a bad conscious:

Looking for polished sea glass, weather-worn driftwood and other treasures on this secluded, North Cape beach, I also found this:
And my conscious said, “You can’t just take the pretty things and ignore all this plastic.” An internal conversation started. “What can one person do to make a difference in an enormous global problem?” “Will others want to help?” “How can we remove tons of plastic waste from a secluded beach?” “Where to start?”
And the answers came in the form of a project called One Step at a Time.
One Step at a Time: 1,000 Shoes gathered from the coast, used in an art exhibition to help increase awareness about the global problem of ocean pollusion and raise funds to rent boats and clean up remote bays that are full of plastic debris.
Status update: 950 shoes collected by local residents ranging in age from 4 to 75 years old.
I’m thrilled that our community is involved in helping collect the shoes. In addition, local, regional and national media channels have also been interested in the project.
This past week I was honored to be asked to share about the project on national television. Here’s the link if you want to see the interview with Sommeraapent NRK1, with our beautiful town in the background, and some of the shoes that have been collected so far. *click on #5 Amerikaner i Honningavag*
And now to the next step: The art exhibition will be a collaboration of several artists, some of the members from the local photo club, and students at the art school.
If you’d like to follow along in the process, no matter which country you live in, you can “like” our facebook page. It would be wonderful to have the international community follow One Step at a Time. Facebook link for One Step at a Time
Reblogged this on Michael Volkmanns Blog.
Så innslaget på NRK! Flott-flott!
Du er dyktig!
I saw this at NRK, – great! Well done!
Tusen takk! Jeg var heldig aa bli spurt og veldig takknemlig at jeg fikk muligheten aa fortelle om prosjektet.
What a cool project. Love it. Great photos
Thank you! It’s been a lot of fun so far.
Hat dies auf Hamburg und Mee(h)r rebloggt und kommentierte:
Very interesting article about the rubbish in our oceans.
As many people at vacation now, please just to remind take your litter with you and not throwing away into rivers, ocean, landscape .
Hi Erica,
reblogged on Hamburg und Mee(h)r.
Cheers Angela 😉
Thanks Angela… appreciate it!
You are welcome 🙂
I think your pictures are quite shocking.
Cheers Angela
this is so great! a friend just wrote about the beach trash where she lives at san clemente ecuador. i’ll go back and link you two together!
http://nanlevin.wordpress.com/2013/07/20/beach-trash/
Thank you! I will check her site out. Appreciate your feedback.
It looks like much of the beach garbage is from lost fishing or crabbing gear. And plastic.
There is definitely a lot of debris from fishing and crabbing boats, but plastic is the main problem…. bottles, tubes, buckets, containers… from all types of industries. It can be quite overwhelming.
Great project! Congratulations on its success. Littering is a thoughtless behavior.
Thank you, Jane. I am looking forward to finishing the artwork and seeing the response when the exhibition opens.
This is a wonderful thing!
Thank you!
I do not have FB..please keep us apprised here?
Yes, I’ll be sharing updates here as well. Thank you for your interest in the project.
It’s a great one!
It was rather trippy watching/listening to you speak Norwegian with the host of the show…I kept expecting everyone to go back to speaking English…they looked and sounded so….”American” somehow. 🙂
Good for you, Erica…how nice to see your efforts drawing some positive attention.
Funny, Scott. I guess it probably’s about the same as a talk show in the States 🙂 And thanks for your well wishes. I’m looking forward to seeing how the project continues.
Fantastic project. I wish you and your community great success. 🙂
Thank you! It’s very exciting.
Congratulations, Erica! Great publicity for a worthwhile project – well done!
Thank you Anna. I’m so grateful for the publicity and really looking forward to creating artwork this Autumn.
Terrific, Erica! : )
Thank you, Karen. I’m grateful and thrilled for the publicity.
I tried to open your pictures in full screen, but received a message saying they contained a ‘fault’ (no further description) and could not be displayed. They were, however, quite OK in normal mode.
Ok, I don’t know why. I’ll have to check it out. Thanks for letting me know.
Congrats, well done!!!
Awesome project!
Thank you!
Great project ! And you were fantastic in the interview! Thank you for sharing.
Do you understand if i write in Swedish, or do you prefer if i write in english ? // Maria 🙂
Takk Maria. Du kan skrive paa svensk… tror det gaar helt fint.