United Nations Environment Programme
8 million tonnes. That’s how much plastic finds its way to the world's oceans every year. That’s a dump truck a minute. That plastic chokes our seas, killing marine life and devastating ecosystems. By 2050, at our current rate of disposal, there will be more plastic in the ocean than fish.
To combat this scourge the UN undertook a global campaign to, first, raise awareness and get people and governments across the world aware and active around the problem, and then more critically, to direct that energy towards pressuring companies to eliminate plastic from their products and packaging because clean seas aren’t merely about eliminating what’s there, but changing the origins of plastic waste at its source. Inspired by Japanese tsunami painting, The Great Wave off Kanagawa, the wave mark that anchors the campaign's identity is made up of hundreds of dots representative of microplastics – plastics invisible to the eye, but present by the trillions in our oceans. Hiding in the microplastic wave's negative space is the campaign's more recognizable message. The color palette finds its origins in water and coral. The brand is supported by photography depicting not the problem but the places on earth where water and land meet, meant as a reminder that while the plastic winds up in the ocean its origin is land-based – and it depicts them free of waste as a depiction of what the campaign aspires to.
The Clean Seas campaign was introduced on a beach in Indonesia in concert with an announcement by the Indonesian government of major plastic curtailment legislation. A Clean Seas website was launched to educate public support and catalyze action to pressure governments and companies to engineer solutions that cut plastic production at the source. The effort was supported by a traveling exhibition that circled the world for two years (also documented on a separate case study here). To further raise its profile UNEP partnered with the Volvo Ocean Race, a well known world-circumnavigating sailing competition, as a major sponsor.
The campaign collected hundreds of thousands of petition signatures as well as pledges, initiatives and legislation from governments around the world to stem the flow of ocean plastics from production to our oceans. In a fulfillment of the campaign's primary goal, it also netted agreements with major plastic producers to rethink their supply chain and production methods.
United Nations Environment Programme
8 million tonnes. That’s how much plastic finds its way to the world's oceans every year. That’s a dump truck a minute. That plastic chokes our seas, killing marine life and devastating ecosystems. By 2050, at our current rate of disposal, there will be more plastic in the ocean than fish.
To combat this scourge the UN undertook a global campaign to, first, raise awareness and get people and governments across the world aware and active around the problem, and then more critically, to direct that energy towards pressuring companies to eliminate plastic from their products and packaging because clean seas aren’t merely about eliminating what’s there, but changing the origins of plastic waste at its source. Inspired by Japanese tsunami painting, The Great Wave off Kanagawa, the wave mark that anchors the campaign's identity is made up of hundreds of dots representative of microplastics – plastics invisible to the eye, but present by the trillions in our oceans. Hiding in the microplastic wave's negative space is the campaign's more recognizable message. The color palette finds its origins in water and coral. The brand is supported by photography depicting not the problem but the places on earth where water and land meet, meant as a reminder that while the plastic winds up in the ocean its origin is land-based – and it depicts them free of waste as a depiction of what the campaign aspires to.
The Clean Seas campaign was introduced on a beach in Indonesia in concert with an announcement by the Indonesian government of major plastic curtailment legislation. A Clean Seas website was launched to educate public support and catalyze action to pressure governments and companies to engineer solutions that cut plastic production at the source. The effort was supported by a traveling exhibition that circled the world for two years (also documented on a separate case study here). To further raise its profile UNEP partnered with the Volvo Ocean Race, a well known world-circumnavigating sailing competition, as a major sponsor.
The campaign collected hundreds of thousands of petition signatures as well as pledges, initiatives and legislation from governments around the world to stem the flow of ocean plastics from production to our oceans. In a fulfillment of the campaign's primary goal, it also netted agreements with major plastic producers to rethink their supply chain and production methods.
