What are the Trash Isles?
And can I use frequent flier miles to get there?
How do you like to spend your Sunday afternoon?
Last Sunday, I spent mine working with my children on their school projects.
To anyone who has experienced this, you know what this looks like:
OK, maybe not…
For a good part of the afternoon, I found myself alternating between google and Canva, as both kids gathered information and figured out how best to present it.
My 7-year-old son’s assignment was to make a “travel brochure” for Antarctica. It was so persuasive that I’m checking the couch cushions to see if I can find 20 grand to take a trip to The Ice.
But it was my 10-year-old daughter’s project that introduced me to a new place in the world:
The Trash Isles.
I’m sorry…what?
What are the Trash Isles?!
I was curious…
The theme of my daughter’s assignment was “Oceans” – and such a wide brief led to a lot of google search results.
One of these was an article about plastic pollution in the ocean.
From there, we read about a researcher and environmentalist named Charles Moore.
Moore grew up in Long Beach, California, taking frequent sailing trips in the Pacific Ocean with his father and siblings.
His love of the ocean led him to found a scientific and educational non-profit in 1994, focused on studying and restoring the coastal waters of Southern California.
Then in 1997, Moore discovered something that surprised him – that would change his life.
He had finished the Los Angeles to Hawaii Transpacific sailing race, and was on his way back to California when hurricane winds blew him off course.
As he drifted in the Pacific, he started seeing plastic objects in the water, one popping up after the next.
“As I gazed from the deck at the surface of what ought to have been a pristine ocean, I was confronted, as far as the eye could see, with the sight of plastic,” Moore said.
He decided to turn it into a game – and every 10 minutes, he came up to the deck to see if he could get a clear view of the ocean, without any trash.
He couldn't.
“So I said, you know what, this has got to be more than just Hansel and Gretel leaving a trail of crumbs just for me to follow home. This is not what it is,” Moore said.
“This has gotta be a bigger phenomenon.”
What Moore had found would later become known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a collection of marine debris in the North Pacific Ocean.
A year later, Moore returned to the area and found a vast “plastic-plankton soup” along with all kinds of discarded items, including a volleyball1, a truck tire mounted on a steel rim, and a gallon bleach bottle.
By 1999, he found that in this part of the ocean, there was six times as much plastic than zooplankton.
Moore and his Algalita Foundation began working with researchers, activists, industry leaders, and educators around the globe to raise awareness and fight plastic pollution in the Pacific.
And it turned out that the polluted area Moore encountered in the North Pacific Ocean was not the only “garbage patch” to be found.
There are in fact five large floating plastic debris zones in our oceans, two in the Pacific, two in the Atlantic, and one in the Indian Ocean.
Rotating ocean currents called gyres pull the debris into one location, forming “patches.”
While some of this debris is visible at the surface, it spreads across all the way to the ocean floor, and includes items varying in size, from tiny microplastics to large abandoned fishing nets.
While some animals get tangled in the nets, the tiny microplastics swirl around and are easily ingested by birds and other animals.
It also means humans can be exposed to these microplastics.
For years, Moore would return to the garbage patch in the Pacific as part of his research, and noticed how rapidly the amount of plastic garbage in the area was increasing.
Others, including oceanographer Curtis Ebbesmeyer, were also tracking these garbage patches, which became more well-known after the Los Angeles Times wrote a Pulitzer Prize-winning series about them in 2006.
But despite more awareness, the patch, described by one journalist as “a massive, eternal slowly swirling vortex of noxious garbage the size of a continent” kept on growing.
By 2017, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch covered as much area as France.
But how could you make people aware of this problem — and how could you make them care?
Through creativity, of course!
And to raise awareness of the issue, the Plastic Oceans Foundation partnered with LADbible and creative agency AMV BBDO to create a campaign that would illustrate how big the problem was.
Instead of talking about garbage patches, they introduced the world to a new “nation” – The Trash Isles.
On World Ocean Day in 2017, they submitted an application to the United Nations to recognize “Trash Isles” as an official country, as being part of the UN would mean other nations would be obliged to help clean up the mess.
To help the Trash Isles be considered a nation, the campaign created a special Trash Isles passport and a flag, and even gave this new nation their own currency – the debris.
They made former US Vice President Al Gore an honorary citizen of the Trash Isles, and named actor Judi Dench the Trash Isles Queen.
Actor/wrestler John Cena agreed to serve as the Trash Isles’ Minister of Defense.
An online campaign invited people to become “citizens” of the Trash Isles.
More than 215,000 people signed up and pledged to reduce their plastic use and spread the word about the plastic crisis.
The Trash Isles campaign received attention from millions of people around the world, and started a conversation about the problem of plastic pollution in the oceans.
But did the campaign succeed in the goal “to ensure the world’s first country made of trash would be its last”?
Time will tell.
But I think we can agree we all want our oceans filled with more fish than garbage.
One more thing:
Though plastic pollution has been rapidly increasing since 2005, a study published in 2023 found that “thriving communities of coastal creatures” were living thousands of miles from their original home on plastic debris in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
I guess it’s true what they said in Jurassic Park: “Life finds a way.”
Life might find a way, but just like Don’t Mess with Texas reminded us not to litter in Texas, let’s not litter in the ocean either.
What else is on my mind?
Remember when a smoking camel was scary? I do, and I’d take Joe any day over what I read is happening to CHILDREN on the platforms owned by Meta.
Seriously, did Mark Zuckerberg not get the message from Whitney?!2
How Can I Help?
I’ll keep saying it: Communication matters.
Case in point: The CEO of Kyte Baby, who is probably having a lot of sleepless nights due to a poor decision — and even worse communication.
This story is more proof that poor communication costs you — money, relationships, and your reputation.
And if you want to improve your communication (and get all the good things that come with that), I’m your gal.
So many companies could reap significant benefits – from performance and culture to retention and engagement – by improving their communication.
So, if you know someone who could benefit from some help (as even the most seasoned leaders do), please get in touch and check out my website for more information.
You can also see my Top 10 list of what I can (and can’t) do for you here.
And if you see any communication examples (the good, the bad, and the ugly) that you think are worth analyzing or sharing, please send them my way!
Until next time, Stay Curious!
-Beth
Wilson?
Or Coming to America? School of Rock? The Simpsons? This message has been repeated in pop culture for decades!