‘You can go to this beach every day and fill a bucket of plastic’, says Cheryl King of the Hawaii Wildlife Fund. King is quoted on the website plasticsouptrip.com on which industrial designer and journalist Daniel Poolen reports on his trip to Hawaii. Poolen travelled there to see the consequences of the Plastic Soup with his own eyes.
Daniel Poolen finished his BA in Industrial Design and Master in Sustainable Technology Design at University of Twente. He then started to work as a researcher and journalist for several television programmes in the Netherlands and became involved with The Plastic Soup Foundation. Here he now heads the Plastic Soup Lab that acts as matchmaker between innovators and investors who want to act against the pollution of the oceans by plastics.
Mid August Poolen left for the islands of Hawaii, Los Angeles and San Fransisco to see what is really happening in the North Pacific Gyre, also known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Poolen wants to know how people in the area cope with the problem, what they know about it and what solutions they already have come up with. On his website Poolen reports on what he encounters, like the incredible sculptures made of plastic debris by environmental artist Angela Haseltine Pozzi.