Come Join The Trash Isles!

This month, UN spokesman for the UN’s Secretary-General Stéphane Dujarric was granted a certificate of honorary citizenship to an area that hopes to become the world’s 196^th nation – the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, or formally known today as The Trash Isles. He’ll join the ranks of other citizens like Al Gore (the first applicant) and actress Judi Dench.

Source: LADbible

The movement to designate the France-sized garbage patch as its own nation was spurred by advocates from the Plastics Oceans Foundation and UK-based entertainment company LADbible. Today it boasts its own flag, passport, currency (appropriately called ‘debris’), and more than 140,000 “citizens” from countries spanning the globe, making The Trash Isles the 25^th-smallest country in the world.

The “country” hopes to be the latest member to the United Nations. As a member-country, the other 193 UN nations would be compelled to help clean up the new nation per the UN’s charter.

Source: LADbible

The Trash Isles itself is actually a massive soup of floating microplastics, which renders it incredibly tricky to clean up and severely dangerous to the ecosystem. Through bioaccumulation, these microplastics have a good chance of winding up in our food supply, harming marine life along the way.

The campaign, and its vast multinational participation, draws attention to the enormity of our waste problem and the fact that it is our collective responsibility to mitigate and remedy it.

So what can you do?

• We can stop adding to the problem by limiting our use of single-use plastics and employing sustainable alternatives, like Trash Hero bottles and bags.
• Pick up trash in your community, either on your own or find a cleanup in your area.
• Separate your trash. Recycle what is possible for your area, and find ways to use items that are non-recyclable. Ecobricks provide one solution for plastic waste, or up-cycle items to use for art, furniture, even stand-up paddle boards!
• Encourage others to also develop sustainable habits.
• Start a local Trash Hero chapter to establish enduring, consistent change at your local level.

Through this collective behavioral change we can keep this new nation from growing in size.

To help raise further awareness, “apply for citizenship” of The Trash Isles here.