Plastic Pollution
Stephen Hayers, Ruth Sellers
Following the successful activist “plastic attacks” on supermarkets, which started in 2018, and the good news stories from the supermarkets on reduction of plastic packaging, you could be convinced that the threat of single-use plastic packaging is almost over. However, on examination nothing could be further from the truth.
- Over 400 million tons of plastic produced each year, creating 3.4 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions in 2019, expected to triple by 2060. This is significantly more than global aviation,
- 22 percent of all plastic waste has ended up in the environment, and by 2040 this is set to increase by half,
- 98 percent of single-use plastics made up of petrochemicals, and microplastics ending up in our blood and internal organs,
- Almost 80 percent of all plastic ever produced is still in the environment, and it does not biodegrade, it breaks down into microplastics over hundreds of years, releasing toxic chemicals and carcinogens.
(https://www.wwf.org.uk/learn/environment/plastic-pollution)
Cyanotypes
Rivers have always been a place of comfort for me. They circulate our areas, changing shapes and sizes. That change is automatic; it’s just the way nature intended. They echo our lives in that sense.
However, we can often see change coming, nature not so much. Our rivers are becoming an abundance of waste.
These sun prints, made of handmade paper, are intended to reflect this. The print echoes the plastic and waste flow throughout our rivers. But so does the paper. Eventually this paper will crumble and become unusable. I could perhaps glue it back together and it look somewhat similar. But we won’t be able to do the same for our rivers.
Sound Installation
This is a poem entitled 22 year old worries. The poem is a satirical take on current topical issues regarding water pollution, AI water consumption as well as plastic pollution. It comes from a place of genuine worry, made to exercise my own climate anxiety through making humour of the dark corporate entities that have little to no regard for the environment nor sustainability.
My aim was to attract attention to topics such as the dumping of sewage waste in lake Windermere, brought to my attention by activist Matt Staniek of Save Windermere. I felt that whilst there are serious issues that I cover in the poem, I don’t want to fearmonger too much and the listener deserves to have a laugh, whilst still embedding factual information such as Coca Cola, Pepsi and Nestle alone making up 19% of the worlds plastic pollution. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adj8275
Oliver Alterskye