The Eco-Celeb Couple of the Week is a new weekly guest blog from Eco News Network focusing on green celebrity couples and their sustainable goodness.
What do you get when a surfer and beach volleyball player marry? Besides two healthy professional athletes with great bodies, you get two avid supporters of the environment; at least that’s the case with Gabrielle Reece and Laird Hamilton.
Gabrielle and Laird are two popular names in the sporting world, since they are both well-advanced in their given sports. Gabrielle, a champion volleyball player, and Hamilton, a legendary big wave surfer ensure that their outdoor arenas are taken care of.
It seems fitting that these two would take care of the outdoors, since that’s basically where the couple has spent the majority of their time working and improving their skills as athletes.
Many of the organizations they support deal with cleaning up coastal lines. In 2010, they appeared on “Good Morning America” to promote awareness for the 25th Annual International Coastal Cleanup, promoting the need to remove trash and debris from beaches and waterways, along with reaching out to change these unhealthy behaviors.
It’s appropriate for the couple to ensure oceans, beaches and coastal lines remain clean and healthy, since the outdoors is basically an office for the two. It’s another home for them and their family. The athletic-couple were also devastated by the BP Gulf Coast oil spill in 2010.
The Natural Resources Defense Council uploaded the following video, where Gabrielle and Laird expressed not only their feelings, but how their connection with the ocean.
“My kids that’s their backyard. I think when they’re adults, their memories will be mostly of spending time at beach, the exploration, the freedom that you have,” Gabrielle expressed.
“You take care of your house that you live in and we make our bed and we clean our cars and we do all that stuff, but yet we neglect sort of the place that really provides us with the greatest form of sustainability, which is the ocean,” she continued.
Her husband also went on to say, “Everything I have in my life has come somehow through the ocean. It’s my church. It’s the place where I go for peace and it’s my teacher,” Laird said.
In addition to protecting waterways, they also support eating healthy and maintaining gardens. Gabrielle, 42, and her 47-year-old husband recently joined the cast of “Hawaii Five-0” at the Joint Base Pearl-Harbor Hickam for the American Heart Association Teaching Garden, where they taught military school children about healthy habits.
This particular Teaching Garden teaches elementary children how to plant seeds, care for plants, harvest produce and overall understand the importance of good eating habits. This is an extremely significant factor in our world today, especially with childhood obesity. Gabrielle and Laird have two daughters of their own, so they are not only setting an example for other kids, but also their own.
It’s nice to see a couple so involved with the environment, especially together. They support many of the same causes and work together improving the planet.
-Allyson Koerner
Allyson Koerner is the assistant managing editor and contributing writer at Eco News Network, a sustainable news site providing news, trends and commentary on a variety of green topics such as home and design, pets, businesses and pop culture.
Photo Credit: Gabby Reece 360
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