#204 2017 · Plastic Oceans Foundation / LADbible · Environmental advocacy / medialegibility
A media publisher declared the Pacific garbage patch a country, so ignoring it would mean ignoring a UN member state
the problem
An environmental disaster too diffuse and ownerless for any government to be responsible for cleaning it up
background
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, an area of floating ocean plastic estimated at roughly the size of France, sits in international waters that belong to no country, which means no national government is obligated to clean it up and no environmental regulator has jurisdiction to force anyone to. The standard advocacy response to a problem like this is awareness campaigning — documentaries, viral photos of trapped wildlife, corporate pledges to cut plastic use — none of which creates an entity with legal standing to demand cleanup funding or action.
LADbible, a UK youth-media publisher, partnered with the nonprofit Plastic Oceans Foundation in 2017 rather than run another awareness campaign. The insight: the United Nations already has a well-defined bureaucratic process for one specific kind of claim — recognizing a new member state — and that process obligates the UN to at least respond, something no ordinary environmental petition does.
the move
On World Oceans Day, 8 June 2017, the campaign submitted a formal Declaration of Independence to the United Nations naming the garbage patch the 'Trash Isles' and requesting recognition as the UN's 196th member state, complete with a national flag, a passport made from recycled materials, and a currency called 'Debris' featuring the marine animals harmed by ocean plastic. The pitch to would-be 'citizens' who signed up: as a recognized nation, the Trash Isles would be entitled to UN Environmental Charter protections and cleanup assistance obligations that apply to member states but not to unowned international waters.
the payoff
The campaign reached over 250 million people within its first 60 days across social and earned media, drew more than 215,000 registered 'citizens' via a Change.org petition — enough, the campaign noted, to rank as roughly the 26th-smallest country in the world by population — and recruited high-profile 'citizens' including former US Vice President Al Gore. A spokesperson for the UN Secretary-General called outright recognition 'fairly nil' as a real possibility, but did publicly call the campaign 'a very innovative and creative way to bring attention to a problem,' the acknowledgment the campaign was actually built to extract.
what came after
Trash Isles is cited in advocacy and marketing circles as a reference case for 'weaponizing bureaucracy' — using an institution's own formal recognition process, rather than appeals to its goodwill, to force a response — and remains one of the most-cited examples of a media-driven environmental campaign converting reach into a specific institutional acknowledgment rather than only public sentiment.
references
- [1]Trash Isles Case StudyLADbible Group, 2018ladbiblegroup.com
- [2]Activists want ocean garbage patch to be new countryFox News, 2017foxnews.com