Content area
Full Text
Ian Kiernan of Sydney, Australia, is an activist in board chairman's clothing. His elegant blazer, neat moustache, and affable manner are badges of his success in business, but now he is leading what has become the biggest grass-roots movement ever to clean up the planet.
First celebrated in Australia as a yachtsman, Kiernan represented his country in the BOC Challenge, a solo around-the-world yacht race, in 1987, placing sixth. The special pleasure of surfing mountainous seas in a small yacht is a feeling of being at one with the ocean, he says. The sense of harmony is so sweet that when he sleeps at sea, he dreams in Technicolor. So the sorry sight of the Sargasso Sea littered with plastic seemed a personal violation, not least since the BOC Challenge competitors had agreed before the start to keep their plastic garbage on board instead of tossing it overboard as is traditionally done.
That experience alone might not have changed Kiernan's...