Infographics: The Great Pacific Garbage Patch

You may have seen images and heard about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a massive swirl of plastic pieces off the coast of Hawaii. These infographics, one by 5W Infographics on Visual.ly and the other published by Good.is, break down what the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is, look closely at the plastics that comprise it, and examine the impact it has.Good.is also reports that Method, a maker of environmentally-friendly & sustainably packaged cleaners and home products, is releasing a new dish soap packaged in plastic sourced from the  Pacific Ocean. Reportedly, the new bottle is made of recycled plastic, 10% of which is from the Pacific Ocean.It’s a first of its kind—and shows the intersection of sustainability, innovation, and business.  By ‘commoditizing’ ocean plastic, the company has created a product that you literally cannot purchase anywhere else. Just like museums display parts of the Berlin Wall or rocks from the Moon, this bottle enables everyone to own ‘a piece’ of the massive gyre of plastic whirling in our oceans. It takes something that is undesirable waste, and makes it into something that people may covet partially because of its novelty.Scroll below to see Method’s video about the Great Pacific Garbage patch and visit their ocean plastic page to see additional videos, including one showing how the plastic was created and processed to create the new bottles.

 

 

Good.is infographic: Through the Gyre