My Nonprofit Reviews

I was on Bonnie's masters thesis committee at the University of North Carolina Wilmington (UNCW), where she first introduced the idea of the "Plastic Ocean" to those in attendence. Then, it was in Hawaii in 2009 at Kamilo Beach (the plastic beach on the Island of Hawaii) seeing all of the plastic debris, that she started to formulate the Plastic Ocean Project (POP). Immediately after that she sailed with Charlie Moore on a 31-day trip from Hawaii to Long Beach CA, through the Great Garbage Patch. Her ideas 'gelled' on that cruise and the Plastic Ocean Project started. Since that time she has made her mark and POP has and continues to grow. Among others she has interviewed Jean-Michel Cousteau for her soon to be releasded documentary "If the Ocean Could Talk." She continues to add innovative projects to the POP repertoire, for example, fishing for plastics off the coast of North Carolina. Another innovative initiative is "Trees for Trash" where trash (including plastic trash) is collected for disposal at landfills and trees are planted around the landfill and other sites. She has taken her NGO a step further in purchasing a FTIR Spectrometer for determining which kind of plastic POP has been collected. Her outreach to young students, K- 12, has been exhaustive and I'm sure turned many children into "Plastic Police." She also continues to teach classes at the college level at UNCW. Over the years she has continued to expand the goal of POP and I'm convinced she has a myriad ideas for the future. Having talked to her recently she is looking to continue expanding POP. She has accomplished a lot since the founding in 2010. The future with new ideas to combat plastic pollution is bright.