Greenhouse Game-Changer: Hugo Tagholm, Surfers Against Sewage

Fiona Stainer

Hugo Tagholm is the Chief Executive of Surfers Against Sewage (SAS), the innovative and dynamic Cornwall-based charity focused on building a movement of people to protect the ocean. Last year alone, SAS launched their ambitious Million Mile Beach Clean, made a splash at the G7 summit, exposed the ‘dirty dozen’ companies fuelling the UK’s packaging pollution crisis, and released a damning yet galvanising report on the quality of our UK bathing waters.
At the start of what will be a critical year for oceans on the international policy stage, we caught up with Hugo to hear more about SAS and the organisation’s mission for 2022.
Hugo Tagholm
Chief Executive, SAS
Tell us in 20 words or fewer about Surfers Against Sewage and your mission.
Surfers Against Sewage is focused on creating ocean activists everywhere. We're a charity about people and the planet.Why have you chosen to focus on marine conservation?
I've had a convoluted journey that has ended in a place I feel I was always destined to get to. I was mad about nature as a kid. I spent a long time scouring coastlines and rock pools, and collecting, documenting, labelling, and researching everything I found. It’s my first great passion - the outside world and wildlife. Then I became interested in sports, and surfing captured me. Surfers Against Sewage fuses my great passion for nature, my great passion for sport, and my great passion for people and politics. It brings together all the things I love. We're a living, breathing movement of people focused on ocean conservation and restoration, and that's driven by people's connection with the sea. Our members love the sea, whether that's surfers or swimmers or holidaymakers. Surfers isn't an exclusive or excluding term. It's about surfers bringing people together and using the inspiration of the ocean to drive change. It starts at the beachfront and it goes all the way to the front benches of parliament.What values are at the core of your work?
We're dynamic, we're daring, we're open. It's about seizing opportunities and taking risks. I love running a charity but the charity sector can often be quite risk averse and almost un-innovative. For us, innovation, progress, and looking forward are key. I think we prove that time and time again with our campaigns. So many businesses and charities can get left behind because they're not daring enough, and they're not dynamic enough to move with what is now a very fast-paced society.What does an average day look like for you?
My days are focused around strategy, communications, and networking. Because of the pandemic, I've also been focused on making sure the team is supported through a difficult time. A typical day will consist of media interviews, and working on high-level strategic plans with funders and partners. It will involve working with my leadership team to make sure that the plans are progressing in the right way. And hopefully, depending on the day, it involves a dip in the sea. It's been less frequent than I wanted this year, but next year it's going to be core to my mission. It’s the driving force behind what we do and if we lose that, we're unanchored.Tell us about a career-defining moment.
2015 was a really big year for Surfers Against Sewage. We ran an event called the Global Wave Conference, which showed off our ambitions on the global stage, which was probably one of the defining events for us as an organisation. It really started to set us apart from other charities in the UK, and embedded our ambitions in the psyche of the public.How is what you’re doing inspiring change in others?
I think our community speaks for itself. Last year we mobilised over 140,000 beach clean volunteers. We've got 850 plastic-free communities in all corners of the country. We have 230 regional reps leading communities in towns, cities and villages around the country. We regularly comment on the big ocean issues in the national news. We have a royal patron. We’re well-known in Parliament. Through all of that – the influence we have on a national scale and within the establishment – we've remained true and authentic to our roots and never drifted away from that. I think that speaks for itself. We reach a huge amount of people with an incredibly small team of 27 people here in Cornwall.What's the one thing that you want people to know about your work?
We're all about the people around us. Our campaigns should be in the heart of people, and our people are at the heart of our campaigns. I want people to think about their connection with the ocean and how they can use their voice to create change with us.What's one action that you want people who will read this blog to take today to protect people and nature?
Most of all, I would ask people to become political and to make politicians understand their feelings – whether it's through signing petitions or writing letters to Parliament on the issues you care about with guidance and support from charities like Surfers Against Sewage. I think politicians now are feeling the pressure and it’s important we keep that up. We're already affecting change on ocean and climate, on water quality, on plastic pollution. The more people that are making their feelings heard, the better. There’s a school of thought that it will all be down to individual actions to save the planet. I don't think we can refill or reuse our way out of the situation we're in. It's one of the greatest tricks in the book by industry and government to assign responsibility to the individual to drive the change we need. It's not going to happen. But our voices together can force the changes we need within the system. So let's connect and mobilise. Let's activate. This needs to be a radical decade of activism, of truth, of honesty, of evidence, and holding politicians and business to account. "There’s a school of thought that it will all be down to individual actions to save the planet. I don't think we can refill or reuse our way out of the situation we're in."