Surfrider & Zuleikha Robinson - they need your vote!

photo: Zuleikha Robinson

Note: This post comes from a blog post written by Surfrider San Diego's Belinda Smith:

About a year ago, the Surfrider Foundation's San Diego Chapter began working with Surfrider’s California Policy Coordinator, Joe Geever, on a new program: Know Your H20. We wanted to raise awareness of how fresh water management issues create a lot of problems for our oceans and beaches.

Here's the problem --

Water is delivered from over thousands of miles away using huge amounts of energy, and at a huge expense. The water is used (often only once,) sent to a waste-water treatment plant, and then dumped in the ocean. And now, we are spending billions of dollars to build ocean desalination factories to pump the water back out of the ocean that we just paid for and transported. To us, it seems like an insane cycle of wasted energy and water resources.

We wanted to show people that by conserving, and planting climate appropriate plants that we could in fact use less water, and that by recycling it to drinking standards, we could re-use our water. Both of these solutions would mitigate our need for desal factories which use way more energy than transporting our water thousands of miles, and in the process, contribute to climate change.

The Surfrider Team first thought about using a website to spread the word about Know Your H20. Then they decided to on something much more dynamic and exciting - they decided to build a flash-animated website.

We began writing the script, creating story boards, and then our friends at Scripps Institute of Oceanography connected us to the actress, and environmentalist, Zuleikha Robinson from the tv show Lost, who agreed to narrate our film. We are still a few months from completion, but because the film is one of the few to offer actual solutions to our water issues, we believe it can have a great impact on our consumers, businesses and agencies.

Check out these 2 screenshots of the flash animation. It's going to be good!




Right now we need your help securing a grant for the film's website. We have applied for a grant from Free Range Studios, who had 400 applicants.

The winners of this contest will be eligible to receive $15,000 worth of design and/or strategic communications services from their menu of core offerings: strategy consulting, identity design, web design, print design, and online movies.

We could really use Free Range Studios' help! But first, we need YOUR help! Please vote for us!

Go here, and please consider giving Know Your H20 all 3 of your votes! We just need to finish in the top 20, and right now, we are at around #23.