Christopher Swain swims through 1,000 miles of crap off of the East Coast

I can barely knock out five laps in my swimming pool. I can’t imagine swimming 1,000 miles through all of the crap floating off the east coast.

That’s exactly what Christopher Swain is up to. To promote sustainability, he’s doing the crawl from Massachusetts to Washington D.C. through an Atlantic Ocean filled with industrial chemicals, heavy metals, oil slicks and raw sewage. On  his environmental swim-about, he’ll be helping students in over  2,000 classrooms launch projects designed to improve the health of our waterways and our world.

This green effort is backed by a terrific sustainable social media campaign. They offer the ubiquitous Facebook and Flickr sites. But what I like most is how they tie Twitter into their site using with the call-to-action of getting “Dirty for Swain.”

Some of the responses are quite bizarre, which makes it all the more compelling.  @gaylelonard, for instance, is showing her butt for @swimwithswain. @MYov isn’t cutting his toe nails anymore. @Ecover is sharing the water-saving-tip-of-the-day widget from Water – Use It Wisely.

Here’s the fun video they created for Swain. CAUTION: It’s a bit disgusting in how some people are “Getting Dirty” for the swimmer.

There are a lot of different entities that are behind Swain’s swim through sewage, which gets a bit confusing.  There’s Timberland’s EarthKeeeper, who wants us to “Catapult eco-hero Swain onto the world stage.” Then there’s the Change Agent site, that features every-day eco-heroes; guys like Tin-Ho Chow, who is biking across America for affordable housing.

But nevertheless, it’s a cool stunt and a solid use of social media to educate, engage, and get people involved.

So, what am I doing to get dirty for Swain? I am inviting all of you to send the “Tip Tank” water conservation concentration game to every kid you know this week. AND, I dare you to get down and dirty and try to beat all three levels.