My entry into the ocean plastics crisis began when our organization, SoulBuffalo, ran the first ever activist-to-industry ocean plastics summit in May of 2019. To imagine the summit, picture 165 senior leaders from Coca-Cola, Dow, Greenpeace, the American Chemistry Council, the World Bank, World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and representatives of some of the world’s 15 million informal waste pickers all stuck on a boat together in the middle of the Atlantic Garbage Patch for four days.
These stakeholders have wildly different strategies, visions and objectives. Our mission was to bring them together in the heart of the crisis to ignite new relationships and accelerate action. We snorkeled together in a sea of plastics and hosted boundary-pushing conversations between leaders that don’t usually sit in the same room.
