With the Leisure with Purpose trip almost upon us, we thought we would share with you a little about the amazing people who help lead these expeditions;
Jennifer Pate
A longtime friend of Pangaea and eXXpedition, Jennifer Pate has been involved with us since November 2014, when she joined us, to sail across the Atlantic Ocean from Lanzarote to Martinique, as part of our all-female eXXpedition team (www.eXXpedition.com). During this scientific research voyage; highlighting environmental issues – from the plastics and toxins in our bodies to those in our water, Jen filmed and produced a 40-minute documentary: “eXXpedition: Making the Unseen Seen”, which premiered at the Royal Geographical Society in London (UK) in March 2015 as the finale of a wider event entitled ‘Phenomenal People, Extraordinary Journeys’ in celebration of women in exploration and field science. Following this, she then returned to us to, co-lead eXXpedition Caribbean (conducting the first ever sampling for microplastics in the Caribbean Sea) and eXXpedition Great Lakes (the world’s largest simultaneous sampling for microplastics in history).
Having recently co-founded, Love Your Greats, (www.loveyourgreats.com), whose aim is, to help connect people with our Great Lakes and waterways, whilst promoting the Great Lakes lifestyle and instigating meaningful action to protect them. Jen joins us once more this time with Mitch Taylor, bringing with them, this format of sustainability through the enjoyment of the outdoors, but this time we are taking it to our Seas.
Mitch Taylor.
Founder and Creative Director at Life of Leisure, joins the Panex family through his business contacts with Jen.
Mitch began building the foundation of the Life of Leisure brand and the philosophy that drives it, while blogging about his travels on a surfing trip to Costa Rica, meeting and being inspired by a local artists. The decision to try his hand at making spray painted t-shirts that he and his friends would wear, formed the beginnings of the fashion side of life of leisure, the designs were such a hit with friends that Mitch quickly evolved his techniques, leaving behind the spray paint and stencils for more sophisticated printing equipment. Building the brand to include the use of sustainable local materials for the production of their surfboards and skateboards from the fabric used in their clothing line .
Mitch aware of Jen, through her connection to the sustainable recreation park Windmill in Ontario, Canada, Had invited her to meet and discuss a partnership initiative, having wanted to donate some of the proceeds from Life of leisure to the important issues facing our Great Lakes. Thinking Jen would tell him where the cash would be most useful, she instead unintentionally dropped a carpet bomb on his entire fall inventory and marketing plan.
How?? … Jen enlightened Mitch to this little known fact;
Every time you wash a piece of polyester clothing it releases poly microfibres into the wash water. That water eventually find it’s way into the lakes (and then around it goes, biosphere style). Remember micro-beads? Well these have the same toxifying effect, only we can’t see them and we don’t fully understand their impact…
Now, Jen claims what she said next was not out of pity for destroying Mitch’s plans, but a way to convey the impact we have on our environment and invited him to team up with her on a trip from Antigua to St. Martin’s aboard Sea Dragon, taking Jen’s knowledge of sustainability and the conservational issues surrounding our waters and Mitch’s ethos of; maximising the work vs leisure balance by combing the two. They have come together to show that we can enjoy a life outdoors and all that it has to offer, without compromising our ‘playground’