The Trash Isles

A massive mound of plastic in the Pacific Ocean becomes a country with its own passport, flag and "Debris" currency, in this design proposal intended to raise awareness about ocean pollution. The Trash Isles imagines the Great Pacific Garbage Patch – a pile of primarily plastic waste floating in the northern part of the Pacific Ocean – as an official country recognised by the United Nations.

To add gravitas to the proposal, London-based designer Mario Kerkstra has created a passport for the country

 

Advertising creatives Michael Hughes and Dal Evans De Almeida, known as Dal and Mike, launched the proposal to force world leaders to address the scale of the ocean trash, which they say has accumulated to the size of France.

"We knew that, even though the trash patch covers an area the size of a country, it is easy for world leaders to ignore it – the saying 'out of sight out of mind' could not be more applicable than with this issue," Hughes told Dezeen.

"We wanted to come up with a way to ensure world leaders can't ignore it anymore, a way to stick it under their noses, literally," he added.

The design features former US Vice President Al Gore, who is supporting the proposal

Dal and Mike are teaming up with social media news company LADbible and non-profit organisation The Plastic Oceans Foundation on the project.

They submitted an application to the United Nations earlier this year, coinciding with World's Ocean Day, to make the project a reality. They have now also launched an online petition through LADbible to support the application, and hoping to gain one billon signatures.

Stamps inside the passport are prints of floating plastic and fish entangled in rubbish

To add further gravitas to their proposal, Dal and Mike enlisted London-based designer Mario Kerkstra to create a passport, money and stamps for the country, which are all made from recycled materials.

"Working with Mario as a designer, we originated the idea to create everything an official country needs, so with him we designed a passport, money, stamps and a flag," Hughes explained.

"Debris" currency has also been designed, with illustrations by Tony Wilson

Kerkstra worked with illustrator Jürgen Willbarth at Illustration Web to create a blue passport with a bespoke coat of arms. Emblazoned with the slogan The Ocean Needs Us, it features a sea lion and a turtle, holding a shield bearing an image of a whale diving into the ocean.

Kerkstra also designed bank notes for the Trash Isle's Debris currency, which Tony Wilson at Jelly London Kitchen has illustrated with images of the ocean devastated by waste.

The 50 Debris note features a sea lion choked by plastic

One side of the 100 Debris note shows a seagull with its head through a plastic six-pack rings, while the other side presents a while diving into water with plastic bottles and bags floating on top.

The 50 Debris note depicts a sea lion tangled in a web of rubbish, while an octopus swims alongside floating waste on the 20 Debris note.

Blue stmps costing 0.30 Debris are also included in the Trash Isles paraphernalia. They depict birds, fish and other wildlife within a web of rubbish.

An octopus swims alongside floating plastic on the 20 Debris note

Dal and Mike hope that recognising the waste as its own country will encourage other world nations to clean it up, under the policy of The UN's Environmental Charter.

So far the the petition has attracted over 100,000 signatories – who are told that they can call themselves citizens of Trash Isle, known as Trash Islanders.

A set of blue stamps, costing 0.30 Debris, are also imagined to depict images of birds and fish within a web of rubbish.

Former US Vice President Al Gore, actress Judy Dench, Olympic athlete Mo Farah and actor Ross Kemp have already signed up, and LADbible are posting promotional movies of some of these famous citizens.

"We're doing this to raise awareness of the massive issue affecting our planet and engage our audience to do something about it, whilst having a little bit of fun too," said LADbible's Stephen Mai, who is leading the campaign.

Ocean plastic is a huge concern for environmentalists, but has also attracted the interest of designers, who have developed a range of ideas to mitigate the problem and raise awareness.

Among the most well-known is Adidas' longstanding collaboration with Parley for the Oceans. Products in the series include trainers made from recycled plastic and of swimwear made from upcycled fishing nets and debris.

An Australian duo created a floating rubbish bin that filters litter from marinas, while Dutch engineering student Boyan Slat has developed a floating barrier to slowly push floating plastic to shore.

LADBIBLE

LADbible is a social media and entertainment company based in London and Manchester, United Kingdom. The firm describes itself as "redefining entertainment and news for a social generation" with a focus on viral content and social video to "provide news, entertainment and community to a global audience of young people".

The LADbible was founded in 2012 by co-founders Alexander "Solly" Solomou and Arian Kalantari and focused on publishing easily shareable clips, pictures and stories.

LADbible are best known for their viral video creation. In July 2017, LADbible were the most watched video creator across the globe with 2.8 billion video views according to Tubular Labs’ monthly rankings.

LADbible publishes a diverse range of original and user generated content – spanning editorial, video, documentary and live. Since August 2014, LADbible have posted over 6,800 videos and generated in excess of 41.8 billion views on Facebook.

In September 2016, LADbible launched a mental health campaign called "U OK M8?" to raise awareness of male mental health issues. A range of charities supported the campaign including the Campaign Against Living Miserably (CALM), the Movember Foundation, Samaritans and the Mental Health Foundation to "engage their huge youth audience and get men to open up to each other." The campaign featured Olympic gymnast Louis Smith who talked about his own experiences of depression

Also in 2016, LADbible launched 'Climate Change', a campaign focused around the environment. The project was shortlisted in the AOP awards in 2017, for best use of social video.

In May 2017, LADbible partnered with Kasabian and Sony Music to become the official streaming partner for the band's new single. Following the release of Kasabian's sixth studio album 'For Crying Out Loud', a groundbreaking real-time video for new single 'Are You Looking For Action?' was streamed via LADbible's and Kasabian's Facebook pages. Co-directed by Aitor Throup and Sing J Lee, this music video was the first of its kind: filmed live and shot in one continuous take.

In February 2015, in an interview with BBC Radio 5 Live, LADbible's then marketing director says "A quarter of 'lads' reading the site are actually women," and that it "absolutely redefines what lads are". This interview was featured in a BBC News article titled "How did The Lad Bible become so successful" which looked at the reasons why LADbible had become so successful and appealed to such a large audience.

Later in the same year, a news story on The Independent looked deeper into how LADbible had "harnessed social media" to fill the gap in the market left by the closure of the once popular Lads' Mag titles. It revealed that where a traditional newsroom is arranged into desks dedicated to specific interests like health, education or business, staff at LADbible's office specialise in different social media platforms; Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram and YouTube.

On 19 April 2017 LADbible featured in Marketing Land as they generated 3.2 billion views to became March's most popular video creator in the world.

PETITION TO CHANGE.ORG

NEW CITIZENSHIPS

Al Gore with his Trash Island nationality

Former vice president of the US, Al Gore, and British Olympic distance runner, Mo Farah, have become honorary citizens of a new ‘country’ called the Trash Isles.

They are working in partnership with the London-based website LADbible and the Plastic Oceans Foundation, who have submitted a petition to the United Nations to recognise the Trash Isles as the 196th country on the planet.

They made the symbolic gesture of becoming honorary citizens because of the travesty of plastic in our oceans. Experts predict that by 2050, the problem will reach such epidemic proportions that there will be more plastic in our oceans than fish. The Pacific Ocean has been polluted by plastic trash the size of France, for example, forming significant land masses in places where it is particularly dense.

Mo Farah, with his Trash Island nationality

The campaigners believe the solution to tackling this problem is for the UN to recognise the Trash Isles as an official country and award it the environmental protections offered to all member states. “Let’s come up with biodegradable materials instead of this junk,” Gore says. “50 billion tons over the last 60, 70 years. It’s completely outrageous. It is absolutely harming the oceans and actually some of it shows up in the fish people eat now. It’s disgusting.”

The Trash Isles launches with everything an official country needs – an official flag, currency called Debris, and passports created from recycled materials. “We are just getting started,” says Stephen Mai, head of marketing at LADbible Group. “There may well be a national anthem, general elections and even a national football team.”

The application has to be read by all members of the UN Council. If the Trash Isles becomes a country and a member of the UN, it will be protected by the UN’s Environmental Charters,. These state that all members shall “co-operate in a spirit of global partnership to conserve, protect and restore the health and integrity of the earth’s ecosystem.”

This means that by becoming a country, other countries are obliged to clean up the Trash Isles.

LADbible's head of marketing, Stephen Mai, says the Trash Isles will have everything a real country needs, from an official flag and currency called 'debris' to passports made of recycled materials, a national anthem, and (of course) a national football team.)

"Come on, fellow Trash Isles countrymen. Let’s put down the plastic, get off our arses and pull together to ensure the world’s first country made of Trash, is its last."

It's an amusing idea and it will be intriguing to see how the UN responds -- although I can't help but wonder how the Environmental Charters could possibly work for the Trash Isles if they've been unsuccessful at controlling pollution at its source.