The Run for The Oceans global movement aims to encourage people to come together to help end plastic waste through sport.

The mechanic of the joint initiative is that for every 10-minute run, adidas' long-standing partner Parley will clean up the equivalent weight of one plastic bottle from the oceans.

This fifth edition of Run for the Oceans introduced new activities to the challenge, making it the most inclusive Run for the Oceans yet.

From Monday, 23 May until Wednesday, 8 June Dubai residents were able to support the initiative by downloading the adidas Runtastic app and clock in minutes from select activities, which included:
  • running
  • tennis, and
  • football.
Participants could actively see and track the actions they took to make a positive impact on a 3D billboard in Downtown Dubai. The billboard was specially designed to show a hyper-realistic ocean wave splashing onto a glass barrier and filled with hundreds of plastic bottles signifying ocean waste.

A live counter on the billboard showed the minutes tracked on the adidas running app, leading to plastic bottles disappearing from the wave; the more people ran, the cleaner the wave got. With every bottle that disappeared from the billboard led to the equivalent weight of plastic removed from the oceans in the real world.

Over the years the Run for The Oceans event has seen various running communities come together to raise awareness about the plastic problem, educating others about the state of beaches and inspiring action to help end plastic waste.

Havas Middle East paired up with Bureau Beatrice to illustrate the premise of this campaign.

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