The Great Pacific Garbage Patch
This infographic is part of the project series on marine plastic pollution. It seeks to raise awareness about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (GPGP) - a vast area in the North Pacific Ocean where marine debris, predominantly consisting of plastic, accumulates. The GPGP is the largest in the world, including more than 1.8 trillion pieces of plastic.
To convey the sheer size of the GPGP to a European and U.S. audience, the infographic makes use of the perceptual constancy design principle. It holds that the human mind will tend to perceive familiar objects in the same or similar way with regards to size, shape, colour, and orientation even if the visual input changes. One of the design implications of perceptual constancy is that when an unfamiliar object is introduced - in this case data on the area of the GPGP - a reference size and/or object must be added to build a bridge between the familiar and the unfamiliar.
The infographic visually shows that the area of the GPGP is the approximate equivalent of 3 x the area of France or the size of Alaska. It also shows that the weight of 80,000 tons of debris is equal to more than 530 blue whales. Both allow the viewer to quickly understand the scale and magnitude of the problem.
