The organization's 2015 Expedition was featured in the 2017 documentary "Smog of the Sea," produced by Jack Johnson, who participated in the voyage.

[16] 5 Gyres also worked with environmental artist Marina DeBris in using trashion to help raise awareness of ocean trash.

In 2012, 5 Gyres was first to discover that plastic microbeads (commonly found in personal care products like toothpaste and exfoliating soaps) were polluting our waterways.

After only two years, the campaign scaled into a national movement, culminating in a watershed victory when President Obama signed the Microbead-Free Waters Act into law at the end of 2015.

[25] This win underscored 5 Gyres' model of using science to drive solutions, and informed the organization's approach to raising awareness about polystyrene and Styrofoam plastic pollution through their 2017 #foamfree Action Campaign,[26] which: With more than 100 communities in California recently enacting polystyrene bans, and a statewide ban on the ballot for 2018, 5 Gyres sees polystyrene as a natural extension of the momentum that began with microbeads.