There are 170 trillion plastic particles in the ocean, which comes out to around 21,000 pieces of plastic for every human on Earth. One company that is working to address that problem has found a humorous way to draw attention to it.
Better Packaging Co. makes courier packaging, garment bags, labels, sealable bags, envelopes, and more out of bioplastics and other materials that are designed to break down over time.
In order to raise awareness for its products and the problem of plastic pollution in our oceans, the company made a giant, 13-foot tall poop emoji out of plastic waste and dropped it on a beach in Australia.
"Every 30 seconds, a pile of plastic s*** this big is dumped into our oceans," a voiceover explains. "Almost all of it is brand-new, virgin plastic. We treat plastic like s***. We need to treat it better."
The voiceover continues, saying, "Better Packaging Co. has found an innovative way to recycle ocean-bound plastic, to create POLLAST!C packaging, keeping about one million kilograms [2.2 million pounds] of plastic s*** out of our oceans this year."
Better Packaging Co.'s POLLAST!C line is recycled from "some of the grubbiest, worst quality plastic out there [which] has literally been picked up off beaches and out of ditches." That means that the company is practicing what it preaches in terms of keeping plastic pollution out of our oceans.
The company's other line, comPOST, is made out of bioplastics, which are made partially from plants, meaning they should biodegrade naturally. Meanwhile, regular plastics made out of petroleum will retain their structure for decades or even hundreds of years.
Some companies that purport to make biodegradable packaging have been accused of greenwashing due to the fact that their products don't actually break down as promised.
Better Packaging Co. has many certifications that indicate its bioplastics work as advertised, including the OK Home Compost Certification governed by TÜV in Austria and The Seedling logo, which, as the Better Packaging Co. site explains, is an "internationally recognized [symbol] that a product will break down properly under commercial / industrial composting conditions."
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