By Katherine Schwab
Give that massive pile of trash a currency, a passport, and a flag, and you’ve got yourself a nation.
Could the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (click here) –that big floating amalgam of garbage that’s floating in the Pacific Ocean–ever become a bona fide country? That’s what a group of creatives and environmentalists are advocating for, as part of an international campaign to raise awareness about the massive clump of trash roughly the size of France.
It may sound like a joke, but the campaign–a collaboration between the nonprofit Plastic Oceans Foundation and the U.K.-based entertainment company LADbible–has already sent an application to the UN requesting that it recognize the Garbage Patch as a country. (Its official name? The Trash Isles.) The crusade launched earlier this summer, but it’s picked up steam this fall with Al Gore agreeing to become the country’s first honorary “citizen.” Since then, more than 125,000 people have signed a petition requesting citizenship–which would make Trash Isles the 25th-smallest country in the world....
