Brandon Boyd creating artwork for T-shirts

 
  T-shirts from Boyd’s charitable collaboration with Hurley

My partners in the band Incubus and I have spent many years sharing ideas of service and charity with our wonderfully passionate listeners. Thankfully our musical ideas tickled their ears and hearts, and with their support we have raised more than $1 million via the Make Yourself Foundation—our nonprofit established in 2003—which has donated funds to amazing charitable organizations. And since all of us in the band are avid surfers, we are committed to being good stewards of Mother Ocean, so a large portion of the money raised has gone to water charities.

Most recently I have partnered up with my longtime friends at the surf company Hurley and my new friends at Helping Other People Everywhere (HOPE) for the Hurley x Brandon Boyd Collaboration to raise awareness about an old problem I think most of us hoped would just float away: Plastics and nonbiodegradables are creating islands of trash in our oceans. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is estimated to be twice the size of Texas. Fish and other ocean life consume the garbage, which poisons them and the water—and in turn, the humans who eat the fish. The problem is so dire, our food chain is being altered, and the delicate ecosystems at play are being harmed beyond repair.

My ultimate hope is that the number of new, single-use plastics—such as water bottles, shopping bags and the like—will be significantly reduced through education and awareness. We are an island after all. We have no other place to go. We will eventually have to learn how to cooperate and coexist with this organism that created us. So as far as I’m concerned, why not now?

I have an idea: I want us to inform one another through art about a problem that can no longer be ignored. The T-shirts I have designed for this campaign illustrate our message of concern and hope. Let it be the spark that brings new attention to this issue so we can truly start chipping away at it. T-shirts (women’s, $29; men’s, $32) are available in late spring. A portion of the proceeds benefit HOPE.