OceanDetox

With #OceanDetox, WWF Germany and Savespecies are opening the first exhibition space for a good cause in the Metaverse on World Cleanup Day. The exhibition raises awareness for the global plastic waste crisis and generates direct support for environmental protection: users can move around the virtual world created by the Savespecies artists to explore it playfully. The centrepiece of the exhibition is an anamorphic whale composed of 50 floating plastic waste objects. These detailed objects can be purchased as digital art. One focal point of the global plastic crisis is Southeast Asia - the digital art sale supports, for example, the work of the WWF to combat the real plastic flood in Vietnam.

Last year, WWF Germany already set new milestones in the digital space with the multi-award-winning "Non-Fungible Animals" campaign: NFTs designed by artists using resource-saving blockchain technology were used to raise awareness for species conservation and generate proceeds for WWF's species conservation projects. Now, together with Savespecies and the technology company Journee, WWF is taking the next step and bringing art and environmental protection together in the virtual space of the Metaverse.

The WWF warns of a threatening worsening of the rubbish crisis – up to 23 million tonnes of plastic rubbish from land end up in the world's waters every year, which corresponds to about two truckloads per minute. Animals get caught in this waste, for example in old fishing nets, or mistake it for food and often die in agony. It is estimated that 90 percent of seabirds and half of all sea turtles already swallow plastic parts. Plastic waste decomposes over the years into smaller and smaller microplastic particles that can no longer be removed from the ocean and accumulate in the food chain.