Even though Germany only has a small northern coastline, we're still involuntarily contributing to the worlds ocean plastic problem. Germans are some of the best sorters of rubbish in the world, but well under 30% of our plastic is recycled. Rather than dealing with our own trash, Germany is the third biggest exporter of plastic waste (behind the USA and Japan) to countries in South East Asia. Because of less stringent regulations in these countries, this trash often ends up at landfill where it’s blown around in the wind and ultimately into our oceans. Once in the ocean, the plastic gradually breaks down into microplastics and slowly falls to the sea floor where it can take up to 400 years to fully decompose.

Eurythenes plasticus is an innovative form of environmental activism that can be experienced in permanent OOH exhibitions across the globe. To bring the new species and the ocean plastic topic into this context it took an amazing partnership between the agency, the client and world renowned deep-sea ecologist Dr. Alan Jamieson. In addition to background information on the new species, we used the exhibition space to educated people about the plastic problem in the world's oceans and motivated them to sign a petition made by the WWF asking for a global UN agreement to put an end to marine plastic pollution. By placing the ocean plastic problem in this context it gave our message a high level of credibility and long lasting visibility - far beyond any typical ad campaign could.