As you read this, an obscene amount of plastic is making its way into the oceans – in total, eight million tonnes a year, or a rubbish truck full of plastic every minute. There is now so much of it, an area cumulatively the size of France has formed in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Hawaii. With no one paying attention to this catastrophe, LADbible has teamed up with the Plastic Oceans Foundation to take this country-sized trash patch and turn it into the world’s 196th nation – named the Trash Isles.

"This isn’t some throwaway idea. Oh no, on World Oceans Day (8 June) we submitted a Declaration of Independence to the United Nations to seek recognition of the Trash Isles as an official country."

Now, this is going to be a three-month campaign to get the country official recognition and we need your help- to be specific, we need you to ‘become a citizen’, to pressure the United Nations into approving our application and recognising the Trash Isles.