Invisibles
The Plastic Inside Us
ONE WORLD, ONE STORY
ORB COMMUNITY
Orb Media tested the inclusion of dynamically populating surveys throughout some of its stories, so that our audience could engage with the topic and see how their everyday choices fit within a larger community context. The below graphs were presented to users as they completed their own responses and represent the outcomes of these surveys. These surveys are no longer live.
Welcome to our Invisibles community page! On this page, you’ll find a few different things:
responses from our multimedia version’s surveys,
social media feeds for discussion on microplastics, resources/organizations working on the plastics problem, and pictures from our on-the-ground reporting,
information we gathered from you, the community, to find out about your general view and understanding of plastics and microplastics, and
our plastics challenge submissions from the multimedia* version.
Take a look around. See your comments populate to our community page when you submit comments on Twitter using #microplastics #OrbPlastics, and add your voice to our surveys by taking our surveys in the multimedia section.
Enjoy!
RESULTS FROM OUR STORY SURVEYS
Below is are the results for the surveys presented in this story’s multimedia section. Take a look. Does anything surprise you? Head to our multimedia section to add your thoughts, if you haven’t already.
FEELINGS AND THOUGHTS ON PLASTICS
We wanted to understand how people feel, generally, about plastics. To that end, we constructed a Google survey and disseminated it via social media. We asked questions directly relating to plastics:
Is plastic more helpful or harmful to people?
Is plastic more helpful or harmful to animals and the environment?
What is the biggest problem with plastics?
What are the biggest benefits of plastic?
Are you wearing something plastic right now? (fleece, lycra, nylon, rayon, polyester)
Have you heard of microplastics?
If yes, name a type of microplastic:
Where do microplastics come from?
Do you worry about microscopic plastic particles in your food or water?
Who is responsible for keeping plastic out of your food or water?
As well as demographics:
How old are you?
What is the highest level of education you have completed?
What country do you live in?
Additionally, we asked respondents to leave their email addresses if they were open to being contacted by one of our journalists.
Take a look at this short video to see how respondents answered.
YOUR CHALLENGE: HOW MUCH PLASTIC?
As part of our story, we want to bring awareness to how much single-use plastic we use daily. So, we issued a challenge: Take a paper bag and fill it with all the single use plastic you go through over the course of a day. Then, scatter it out on the floor and post a picture to Instagram or Twitter with the hashtag #OrbPlastics. Take a look at some of the contributions, then attempt the challenge yourself. How do you stack up?
