A plastic bottle takes more than 450 years to decompose. To highlight this stat, World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) is showing the decomposition of a plastic bottle in real-time – the longest live streaming ever.
The live stream was launched during earth hour on March 30, in the main square of Lisbon with the presence of several city officials and media outlets.
The live stream will continue for the next 450 years, or until the plastic bottle has decomposed.
The objective of the live stream is to raise awareness of the growing problem of plastic pollution and to raise 400,000 signatures for a petition that will be presented to key global leaders at the United Nations meeting on the environment.
According to the WWF, plastic pollution accounts for 95 per cent of the waste floating in the Mediterranean and lying on its beaches.
Plastic pollution also deeply affects wildlife with half of all sea turtles having ingested plastics and 90 per cent of seabirds having plastic in their stomachs.
The inventive live stream, created to catch the media and public attention, has helped the petition garner over 370,000 signatures and is close to WWF’s final goal.
The campaign is led by Lisbon creative firm, NOSSA.
NOSSA creative director, Nuno Cardoso said “users have a natural interest in live streaming. One proof of this is the growth of sites like Twitch, which every day gets more subscribers.”
“For this reason, we saw in this tool a possibility to show everyone how slow is the process of decomposing the plastic, in an attempt to sensitize them, to gather more people around the cause.”