Beach Buddies founder lectures at YSU this week

Bill Dale of the Isle of Man in the British Isles, the founder of Beach Buddies and a recent recipient of the British Empire Medal, visits campus this week as part of the Youngstown State University Lecture Series on Energy and the Environment.

Dale speaks 7 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 25, in Room B100 of Cushwa Hall. The lecture is free and open to the public.

In October 2006, Dale founded Beach Buddies, an organization devoted to cleaning the beaches on the Isle of Man, an island of about 85,000 residents located in the Irish Sea between Great Britain and Ireland.

Today, the group has more than 8,000 volunteers, and Dale says the island’s beaches are the cleanest in Great Britain, and probably all of the world. Last year, Beach Buddies was recognized by UNESCO Biosphere as “an excellent example” of how to tackle the problem of marine litter on the world’s beaches. Queen Elizabeth has honored the organization for “Services to the Marine Environment.”

A native of the Isle of Man, Dale is a former journalist, newspaper editor, ferry boat operator, bricklayer, electrician, plumber, footballer, shark watcher and architect. Today he is a regular guest speaker and is currently in the middle of a new education program in schools designed to raise awareness of the danger to the environment and wildlife by careless litter disposal.

For more information on Beach Buddies, visit http://beachbuddies.net/.