World Oceans Day takes place every June 8th to recognize that there is one global ocean that connects us all. On this day, global citizens work to prevent plastic pollution and encourage solutions for a healthy ocean.
The Non-Profit Organization, 5 Gyres is a purveyor of ocean health, educational content, and empowerment for change.
“Our mission is to empower action against the global health crisis of plastic pollution through science, education, and adventure.” – 5 Gyres
They have taken their mission to the max and created a multidimensional platform with content that supports the following:
1) Education on the harms of plastics to animal (including humans) health and the ocean.
2) Collaboration with other environmental organizations, research entities, and retail businesses.
3) Introduction to and sales of #plasticfree products via their #plasticfree shopping guide.
4) Making policy involvement easy for visitors with quick links to take political action against (polystyrene, plastic microbeads, plastic straws, etc.).
You can see the results of their efforts via the 5 Gyres History in Numbers. For example, the politically powerful community of 5 Gyres was able to put enough pressure on 16 major personal care product companies to remove microbeads from their product lines, including Johnson & Johnson, Proctor & Gamble, and The Body Shop. And in another instance of action, 5 Gyres was able to divert ~ 16 billion microbeads from oceans and lakes because of their #beadfree campaign pledge.
Co-founders Anna Cummins and Marcus Eriksen have merged their respective experience in Environmental Science Non-Profit and Marine Research to develop the amazing platform that is 5 Gyres. With a Ph.D. in Science Education and Research, Marcus is now launching Leap Lab a science center working to build the modern city that addresses ecology, food and water cultivation, waste, community building, and clean energy. We look forward to seeing how Leap Lab dispels barriers to mass adoption of sustainable modern cities.
5 Gyres is the perfect example of how we can all be doing better, as in building communities with educational content that influence policies. Collectively contributing to the movement toward outlawing environmentally damaging products and practices that have been proven by the scientific boards and researchers around the world is key, and 5 Gyres embodies this collaboration with their contributing partners:
As a content marketer with an environmental science background, it is my opinion that there needs to be this trifecta of empowerment for better solutions to take on the market. We cannot live in a black and white landscape of hyper-environmentalism that in its quest for perfectionism alienates consumerism and market needs. We are a consumer society, but the hopeful part is that we consume media as well and in this, we are capable of consuming educational content that is strategically marketed.
In order to proliferate positive change and mass adoption of sustainable thought processes, as well as products, we need the same trifecta of:
1) Research/Data
2) Market solutions/political action/lobbying (that replace detrimental products like plastics, petrochemicals, petrol, pharmaceuticals, etc.)
3) Educational content and programs that empower people and forces governments toward solutions.
On this World Oceans Day, we want to thank 5 Gyres for breaking ground on a potent model that incorporates this trifecta for effecting positive change for our world’s oceans, this day and all year long.
Consider a donation to 5 Gyres, a sincerely dynamic Non-Profit!