If you’ve been checking into the news section of The Gator’s Eye then you may have noticed that the world’s news is pretty harsh and not always the most fun to read about, which is why we have started this recurring feature, “Gator Goodies,” a weekly article about some good news that will lift your spirits. This week we started with a popular program called, 4Ocean.  

4Ocean is an environmentalist organization that cleans plastic out of the ocean and is trying to raise awareness about the issue. According to the 4Oceans website their mission statement is “to clean the ocean and coastlines while working to stop the inflow of plastic by changing consumption habits.” The founders grew up around the ocean, and when they went on a surf trip to Bali they found that the beaches were covered in plastic waste and even more was washing up. They decided to do something about it. From this plastic, they create and sell stylish bracelets. For each bracelet sold, they clean up one pound of trash from the oceans and coastlines. Even though this company has only been running since 2017, today they have cleaned up almost 8 million pounds of plastic from the environment. 

They are currently focusing their efforts towards Bali, Haiti, and Florida, near their homebase. While it may seem like they are almost done, they are nowhere near the enormous amount of waste actually in the oceans. According to The Good News Network, their next big step is to help clean up Central America AKA the “trash islands.” There are tens of millions of pounds of trash in and around the oceans of Central America alone, so this will be a hard goal to meet!

 Do students at Green Level think this is important? Sophomore Aida Guo thinks so. As a part of the environmental club, she said, “I think plastic in the ocean in general is a huge problem. It’s kind of a mindset of single use and how there is not enough awareness about it.” “A lot of people make money by fishing, and plastic in the ocean would hurt the fish and other sea life which would decrease biodiversity in the ocean. Some things we can do is raise awareness about ocean pollution and try to recycle. If we can get more people to understand the issue then we can get people to do more.” says freshman Jonathan Moore.

This program is doing so much good for our oceans and you can support the cause by going to their website or even just spreading the world! Check back for more good news next week!