Trash Isles

Background

Eight million tons of plastic are dumped in the ocean each year. Despite the scale of this problem and the massive areas this plastic is now forming, Governments have simply ignored the issue and the public remain comparatively unaware of it.

The brief was to draw the attention to the unacceptable amounts of plastic in the ocean and make governments take notice.

Idea

In the North Pacific, waste plastic has formed a floating mass of trash the size of France. To persuade Governments to recognise the problem, the idea was to turn the country-sized island of plastic into a country.

On World Oceans Day, the Plastic Oceans Foundation with LADBible submitted an application to the United Nations for the recognition of The Trash Isles as an official country. Once recognized as a country, the other countries of the world are obliged by treaty to help clean it up.

An identity was created for the new country, with a flag, its own stamps, passports, currency (called Debris) and even its own Queen (Dame Judi Dench accepted the role).

Results

Over 220,000 people signed the petition at change.org and became citizens. There were 690,000 likes, shares and comments. In total The Trash Isles campaign had over 50 million video views. Utilising LADBible’s global network and through earned media, half a billion people were reached. Fox News, CNN, National Geographic, Europe 1, IBT, Daily Mail, Reuters were just some of the major titles that covered the campaign.

Celebrities including Al Gore and Sir David Attenborough lent their names to the campaign.

At the most recent UN conference, 193 countries pledged to tackle the global crisis of plastic in the oceans.

Our Thoughts

This really is a big idea, the sort of long-tail idea that could last as long as it takes to clear up the crap that is polluting the seas and killing so much marine life.

Politicians should be offered free holidays at The Trash Isles. The next series of ‘Survivor’ could be filmed there. Sting ought to write a national anthem.

Anger, when it is transmuted into irony, can be extremely effective whereas undisguised rage, however sincerely expressed, can sometimes be a turn-off.

The bitter-sweet humour of this is in the detail, the authentic patterning of the bank- notes and the passport pages, with floating bottles and six-pack rings subtly woven into the design.