5 Gyres Institute
Science-led nonprofit that measured plastic in all five subtropical ocean gyres and uses that research to drive policy and corporate change.
The 5 Gyres Institute was co-founded in 2009 by Marcus Eriksen and Anna Cummins, a husband-and-wife team. It grew out of Marcus Eriksen’s 88-day voyage from California to Hawaii in 2008 on a raft built from 15,000 plastic bottles. Across 19 research expeditions 5 Gyres has sailed some 50,000 nautical miles.
5 Gyres co-published the first global estimate of floating ocean plastic (2014) and helped document the microbeads that led to the US Microbead-Free Waters Act of 2015. It has held special consultative status with the UN Economic and Social Council since 2017.