Greenpeace Made a Special Bed. But You Won't Want to Lie in It

This bed might look luxe and comfy, but that’s just on the surface. Pull back the covers, and you’ll find the stuff of nightmares.

To spark conversations around plastics pollution, Greenpeace East Asia and DDB Hong Kong created the “Seabed.” It’s anything but restful.

The duvet conceals a mattress crammed with trash collected from the Sai Kung beach area in Hong Kong. It’s mainly yucky plastic containers, food wrappers, product packets and such.

There’s some pointed irony here. Sai Kung is a considered a “pristine” spot by tourists and locals, home to fishing villages and crisp, cerulean seas. Alas, its shoreline and waters are actually choked with some of the nearly 50,000 pieces of plastic trash flushed into Tolo Harbor each day.

“Once people look beyond the ordinary and see for themselves the realistic state of the seabed, we are hopeful that people will now think twice about disposing of plastic in the ocean,” says DDB creative director Phoebe Chan.

“Seabed” succeeds by making its point without going overboard. It’s not so gross that it’s freakish or unintentionally comical. Instead, the installation unnervingly illustrates a huge problem and invites both thought and action. (Visitors are asked to take a pledge to fight pollution.)

The bed is on display this week as part of a gallery exhibit at PMQ gallery, Central District, Hong Kong.

“This exhibition brings us straight to the seabed environment to witness the pollution in person,” says Greenpeace campaign leader Leanne Tam. “Nobody would want a bed like this in their home, and yet this is what sea creatures are getting in theirs. Plastic doesn’t belong in the ocean, and we must stop producing unnecessary packaging in plastics and expanding the use of reusable and refillable systems.”