Sustainability Event: Panel: Junk Raft Exhibit with Dr. Marcus Eriksen – the Plastic Crisis

Junk Raft Exhibit with Dr. Marcus Eriksen
12:30 PM to 2:00 PM

In 2008, Dr. Marcus Eriksen and his crew set out from Los Angeles on a raft made of 15,000 plastic bottles and an old Cessna airplane fuselage. Eighty-eight days and 2,600 miles later, they sailed into Honolulu. It sounds like a stunt, but it was the beginning of a body of research that changed how the world understands ocean plastic.

That expedition led Eriksen to co-found the 5 Gyres Institute, where his research helped uncover something far worse than a floating island of trash: a fine “plastic smog” of microplastic particles spread across every ocean on Earth. His work on microbead pollution in the Great Lakes helped push a federal ban into law in 2015.

Step into the Junk Raft exhibit inside BurnerSphere and walk the raft itself, alongside 4K exhibition footage and real video from Eriksen’s expeditions at sea. He’ll guide you through what he found out there, what it means for the food we eat and the water we depend on, and why he still believes this is a problem we can solve.