Hey, could you #StopSucking?
By Dune Ives, Executive Director of the Lonely Whale Foundation
Celebrities suck but I bet you do too. That’s what my team at Lonely Whale Foundation and I are betting on — that all of us suck and we don’t even know it. This week, Lonely Whale released a public service announcement to raise awareness about just how much we all suck and what our bad behavior is doing to the ocean.
Now have you figured it out yet? Why we, why you, suck?
Every day in the U.S. alone we suck on 500 Million plastic straws. Those lightweight, single-use plastics are just a fraction of our global plastic pollution problem. Each year the world produces an average of 300 million tons of plastic and only about 10% is recycled. What doesn’t make it to the recycling system can end up in our waterways and, ultimately, our ocean. In fact, 60% — 80% of all marine debris is composed of plastic and plastics comprise up to 90% of floating marine debris — of which there is 269,000 tons.
The plastic pollution problem facing our ocean is massive in scale and solutions are hard to comprehend even for those who work in the field. That is why we decided to start with the plastic straw. Though it is vital to to note that for those in the disability community straws are needed, for many of us the plastic straw is unnecessary. Consumers and businesses have the power to refuse this mostly unnecessary single-use plastic product or choose a marine-friendly alternative.
This year at SXSW we tested out what our social relationship is to the plastic straw and how people felt about their ocean impact. To do this we built the “Sucker Punch” photo booth, an experiential slow motion camera installation which was manned by an angry octopus who slapped plastic straws right out of the hands of unsuspecting participants. AdCouncil covered the activation, referencing “Sucker Punch” as the example of how to create a successful social good movement.
So how are we continuing to sucker people into caring about our ocean? That’s where #StopSucking comes in. Just as we did with “Sucker Punch,” our #StopSucking social media challenge aims to make the ocean plastic pollution problem relatable (we all have used a straw), participatory (through a direct social media challenge), culturally relevant (a straw was featured in the most liked Instagram post of 2016), and strike an emotional chord (who wants to suck?!).
Even with all of the right elements, there is a lot of noise on the internet (much like our ocean) so making #StopSucking a viral campaign is not a guarantee, even with the social support from Adrian Grenier and Leonardo DiCaprio. Perhaps if we can engage the Kardashians everyone will be keeping up with ocean health…
Learn more about the campaign, then accept and challenge someone else to #stopsucking here.
