Million Mile Clean
100,000 People x 10 Miles Cleaned
Big problems need even bigger solutions. As the amount of trash burying our natural environment rises, so too must our response. So, in 2021, Surfers Against Sewage launched one of the world’s biggest-ever environmental campaigns. The idea? Empower 100,000 volunteers to each clean 10 miles of the UK’s coast, riverbanks, streets and countryside, in a year.
We created a ripped and worn aesthetic to reference the weathered trash the campaign aims to eliminate. This became the bright, bold, and memorable visual language of various landscapes, paired with old signposts containing our calls to action.
To launch the movement, SAS commissioned a 50-metre piece of sand art highlighting coastal plastic pollution and introducing the Million Mile Clean brand. The imagery and accompanying story ran in the Guardian, The Times, The Independent, and on the BBC, not to mention countless of shares and likes across social media.
The campaign was a massive success. There were 4216 beach, river, street and mountain cleans, with 142,428 volunteers collecting 398,179 kilos of rubbish, and covering over 1.1million miles, making it Europe’s biggest beach clean.
Following this success, the campaign received funding tied to the UN Decade for Ocean Science. Now set to run until 2030, the Million Mile Clean will mobilise a million volunteers to clean 10 million miles of mountains, streets, rivers, and beaches, while collecting vital data to hold businesses and governments to account.
We’re continuing to create branded material to keep up the momentum. For the second year, we designed a set of social assets and a launch animation to let people know the Million Mile Clean was back.
Jack Middleton
Surfers Against Sewage
The Million Mile Clean wouldn't have been the success it was without the bold, punchy and easily-relatable brand and visual language Will created and wove through multiple years of the campaign. His work made it stand head and shoulders above other such campaigns and this has played no small part in mobilising over 500,000 people in just 3 years to clean well over a million miles of beaches, rivers, streets and mountains!
Merchandise
Animation
Copywriting
Illustration
Social
Web Reskin
Web Design: A-side Studio
Film: Ben Battell
Print: P&J Print
Apparel: Teemill
Sand Art: Sand In Your Eye
Sand Art Photography: Richard McCarthy
Other works
