Reminder: The world’s plastic pollution problem is out of hand. See just how nutty it’s getting by watching A Plastic Tide, a 45 minute documentary.  Watch the trailer below.

Related on EcoSalon

The post The Planet’s Plastic Pollution is Out of Control [Video] appeared first on EcoSalon.

Around the world, about 100,000 marine animals die from plastic in the ocean every year, much of which stems from plastic soda and beer can rings being improperly disposed of and contributing to ocean pollution. Today, however, that statistic may be a thing of the past, thanks to a recently released replacement that is completely safe for marine animals to eat.

Created by Saltwater Brewery in Delray Beach, Florida, in partnership with ad agency We Believers, these new beer can rings are 100 percent biodegradable, compostable, and edible by marine animals. They are made from recycled castoffs of the brewing process, byproducts of ingredients like wheat and barley. Even Saltwater co-founder Dustin Jeffers claims he’s eaten one.

This move is in-line with the brewery’s mission statement calls for “maintaining the world’s greatest wonder,” the ocean.

“According to GreenPeace, 80 percent of Sea Turtles and 70 percent of Seabirds are ingesting plastic today,” Saltwater writes in their project summary. “This amounts to 1,000,000 birds and 100,000 marine mammals and sea turtles dying each year because of plastic related incidents.”

These issues are likely to be eradicated and ocean pollution greatly diminished if these new rings take off the way we — and Saltwater — are hoping they will.

“We hope to influence the big guys and hopefully inspire them to get on board,” Saltwater president Chris Gove said in a promotional video for the new rings.

And there’s no reason they can’t – the production cost of the new model will likely be on par with existing recyclable plastic beer rings, which, while slightly more expensive than bottom of the line rings, will do a world of good for the ocean, where 12 billion metric tons of plastic ends up floating every year.

The rings are set to become officially available later this year, and the more breweries who opt in, the more likely the price of the rings is to go down.

For now, there’s no good reason not to support Saltwater and pick up a six-pack — after all, it’s better for the ocean.

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Image care of Saltwater

The post Is This Edible Plastic Invention the End of Ocean Pollution? [Video] appeared first on EcoSalon.

Ghost nets end up in the world’s oceans thanks to a number of factors. They become damaged and end up falling off boats into the ocean, or they get dumped by fishermen who think no one is watching. Either way, they can do a whole lot of damage to an ocean’s ecosystem. 

Ghost nets are an environmental disaster on two fronts as well. They float in the ocean for a while, catching all sorts of fish and marine mammals along the way–causing the most harm to turtles, whales, sharks, dolphins, and other larger species. These species don’t reproduce as often so their populations are hit the hardest when they suffocate at the hands of a floating fishing net. Over time, once the fishing nets finally sink to the bottom of the ocean and break down into a “plastic soup”, the chemicals used to make them are released and eaten by fish as they make their way up the food chain. It’s heartbreaking on so many levels, but there may be an alternative in the works.

Engineering student Alejandro Plasencia has created a fishing net that fixes all of the above problems. His inventive net biodegrades in four years time and built in RFID tags map where the net is located in the ocean so the nets can be retrieved and fixed. The tags are connected to an app that allows fishermen to use their smartphone to find the net.

The nets contain the additive d2w in the thread’s polymer which help them to biodegrade so they doesn’t become ingredients in plastic soup.

“The ghost net and plastic soup phenomena threaten the way of life for many populations, so it’s a problem we were very interested in tackling,” said the designer.

It’s a rational idea to fix a huge problem. I wrote recently that data collected over a six-year period has finally taken an aerial view of the world’s plastics. In all, 5 trillion pieces of plastic, collectively weighing 269,000 tons are floating in the world’s oceans, causing pollution beyond our wildest nightmares.

In the meantime, The NOAA Marine Debris Program is taking steps to deal with discarded fishing gear by providing a place for fishermen to dispose of gear free of charge. The program has collected more than 2.1 million pounds of gear from 41 locations across the United States. But judging by the numbers above, there’s much more work to be done to deal with these imminent threats head on.

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Ocean Plastic Pollution Meets Its Match: A 19-Year Old

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Image: Tomás Fano

The post Banishing Ghost Nets from the World’s Oceans with the Help of a Trackable, Biodegradable Alternative appeared first on EcoSalon.

Most of us realize abstractly that plastic pollution is a real problem in the world’s oceans. We’ve vaguely heard about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch or maybe at one time been dismayed to see plastic floating along a waterway.

It’s a problem that’s somewhat hidden because plastic is a huge industry that keeps pushing more and more plastic products in our faces. But the fact of the matter is plastic pollution is a real problem–a recent study revealed its full magnitude.

In all, 5 trillion pieces of plastic, collectively weighing 269,000 tons are floating in the world’s oceans, causing pollution beyond our wildest nightmares, according to The Guardian. Just to give you an idea, a blue whale (the most massive species on Earth) weighs 100-150 tons–so that’s 2,150 blue whales! Data collected by scientists from the U.S., France, Chile, Australia, and New Zealand found that most of the waste is in the form of “micro-plastics”, the kind that get ingested and make their way up the food chain and into our bodies. That’s a scary thing when you consider chemicals like phthalates and BPA that have already been found to be dangerous. And then there’s the larger pieces that end up straggling far too many marine creatures and birds.

“We saw turtles that ate plastic bags and fish that ingested fishing lines,” Julia Reisser, a researcher based at the University of Western Australia said to The Guardian. “But there are also chemical impacts. When plastic gets into the water it acts like a magnet for oily pollutants. Bigger fish eat the little fish and then they end up on our plates. It’s hard to tell how much pollution is being ingested but certainly plastics are providing some of it.”

The data was collected over a six year period and recently published in the journal PLOS One. Smaller fragments were collected in nets and larger pieces were seen from boats.

“You put a net through it for half an hour and there’s more plastic than marine life there,” she said. “It’s hard to visualize the sheer amount, but the weight of it is more than the entire biomass of humans. It’s quite an alarming problem that’s likely to get worse.”

Plastic often accumulates in “ocean gyres” like the most famous one, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. I wrote a while back about one particular island feeling the brunt of the plastic pollution. Midway should be an untouched paradise, but as a result of waste coming from North America and Asia, upwards of 10,000 pounds of plastic washes up on its shores annually. The island is filled with towers of plastic waste and the dead birds that perished after ingesting it. Each ocean has similar ocean gyres which amount to nothing but plastic.

“Lots of things are used once and then not recycled,” Reisser said to The Guardian. “We need to improve our use of plastic and also monitor plastics in the oceans so we get a better understanding of the issue. I’m optimistic but we need to get policy makers to understand the problem. Some are doing that – Germany has changed the policy so that manufacturers are responsible for the waste they produce. If we put more responsibility on to the producer then that would be part of the solution.”

Need a little more help understanding the scope of this much plastic? Check out this graphic courtesy of Grist that breaks down the tonnage into how many blue whales it equals. The number is staggering. 2,150.

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The Great Pacific Garbage Patch: Nothing Short of a Plastic Paradise

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Image: prilfish

Graphic: grist

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A good facial scrub is essential to healthy skin, but is this seemingly innocent beauty product to blame for massive water pollution?

Life on this planet can’t exist without water, yet water pollution is a major problem for countries around the world. And it’s not only the fault of industrial polluters (although they’ve been allowed to dump horrifying toxins into the water supply for decades). Thanks to hidden ingredients in everyday products, we too are contributing to water pollution without even realizing it.

Many modern exfoliation products contain plastic microbeads that help to slough away dead skin cells. What the makers of these products failed to tell us is that these tiny plastic beads are NOT water soluble. When used, they’re flushed away to water treatment plants that aren’t capable of filtering them out. As a result, the end up in the our oceans, lakes and rivers where they wreak havoc on the ecosystem.

The plastics can be digested by marine life like plankton and mussels and then passed along the food chain to human consumption, according to research by the 5 Gyres Institute. The beads can also attract other pollutants in the water and pass it along to humans.

Here in the U.S., the use of products that contain plastic microbeads is taking a toll on the Great Lakes, which together hold nearly one-fifth of the earth’s surface freshwater. “The highest concentrations were found in 2012 in Lake Erie. Researchers found polyethylene and polypropylene that included traces of aluminum silicate and coal ash, often coming from coal power plants. Some of the samples had 450,000 particles of plastic per square kilometer,” reports EcoWatch.

Of course, making your own facial scrubs and exfoliating masks from edible ingredients is the best way to ensure that your beauty regimen doesn’t encourage water pollution. But if you’re not into DIY, there are other ways to avoid plastic-filled cosmetics. Two Netherlands-based organizations, the North Sea Foundation and the Plastic Soup Foundation, teamed up to create a smartphone app that can help consumers steer clear of products that contain these toxic plastic beads.

The app, called “Warning: Plastics Inside!” can be downloaded at the Apple App Store, the Google Play Store, and Windows Phone Store.

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Give Me Conscience or Give Me Death: Your Plastic Footprint

Image: pyxopotamus

The post Is Your Facial Scrub Causing Widespread Water Pollution? appeared first on EcoSalon.

Curbing our plastic problem is no small task. That’s why the Plastic Pollution Coalition is giving away $50,000 to businesses working towards decreasing our plastic dependency.

Plastic Pollution Coalition, a global alliance working towards a world free of plastic pollution and its toxic impacts on people, animals and the environment, created the Think Beyond Plastic competition for innovative entrepreneurs working on solutions to the world’s serious plastic crisis.

The amount of plastic on the planet is nothing short of alarming. Each year, around 300 million tons of plastic is produced globally. Here in the U.S., only about the half number of plastic bottles produced wind up in recycling centers. The rest creep into crowded landfills, or our vulnerable oceans, creating serious harm to animals and ecosystems. Chris Jordan (Running the Numbers) has documented this tragedy as it’s impacting the helpless residents of Midway Island to a tear-jerking degree in his forthcoming film, “Midway: A Love Story For Our Time From the Heart of the Pacific.”

“Plastic pollution is a problem that the world has just begun to comprehend. Recycling is not an adequate solution to the increasing consumption of disposable plastic. We seek disruptive solutions that will reduce the planetary plastic footprint,” said Daniella Russo, co-founder and executive director of Plastic Pollution Coalition.

The global alliance, which was formed in 2009, has caught the attention of some major media outlets, companies, festivals and foundations. Jann Wenner, Editor and Publisher of Rolling Stone Magazine and one of the Think Beyond Plastic partners said, “Plastic pollution is a major environmental problem, and we are excited about engaging the spirit of entrepreneurship in the solutions.” Other partners for the contest include Apogee Digital, Bonnaroo, Conservation International, One PacificCoast Bank, FSB, The Sam and Peggy Grossman Foundation, and Tabor Communications.

Entrepreneurs working on products, services, materials and infrastructure solutions that can lead to a widespread decline in use of plastics are encouraged to apply. One existing business will receive $50,000 and the most innovative business concept will receive $10,000. The prizes are being underwritten by the Netherlands A-Spark Good Ventures, an investment company. Winners will be decided by Eben Bayer (Ecovative), Mike Biddle (MBA Polymers), Julie Corbett (Ecologic), Adam Lowry (Method), Dr. Ramani Narayan (Michigan State University), Mike Velings (A-Spark Good Ventures) and Adam Werbach (Yerdle). Submissions must be received by March 10^th and the winners  will be announced at ceremonies in June in Berkeley, California.

For more information, view the competition trailer here.

Keep in touch with Jill on Twitter @jillettinger

Image: tompagenet

The post Innovation Competition Aims at Reducing Global Plastic Pollution Problem appeared first on EcoSalon.

Understanding plastic pollution around the world.

Power. When I think of the ocean, that’s the first word that comes to mind.

I’ve been held under by her for what seemed like hours while surfing. I’ve been battered by hurricane force winds sailing across the North Atlantic a few years ago. Right now, on World Oceans Day, I’m reminded of that power again. The non-profit I work for, The 5 Gyres Institute, is hunkered down in our sailing vessel waiting for the first typhoon of the summer season to pass by.

We’re in Yokohama Marina near Tokyo, Japan, preparing to sail into The Japan Tsunami Debris Field, to learn how fast it’s traveling and what the threats to the ocean may be, as well as the implications for North America and Hawaii when the field eventually makes landfall on the other side of the Pacific.

5 Gyres has gone farther than anyone else to demonstrate that the plastic in the ocean is a problem everywhere – not just the North Pacific. We’ve sailed 25,000 miles in all oceans, documenting the human stain of plastic everywhere we’ve traveled. We take crews from all over the world; teachers, students, artists, musicians, activists, basically anyone who has a vested interest in the ocean’s health and can serve as an ambassador for our cause once she returns to land.

Science is a great thing for understanding, but science often tends to stay in academic circles and if we as a global society are going to solve this problem, we need different touchpoints and other onramps for activism. That’s how we make change.

Our latest expedition will give us an alpha point for our research into plastic pollution – plastic and trash enter the ocean everyday, but trying to figure out when it entered the ocean is nearly impossible once you pick it up in the middle. If we can identify objects from the tsunami, we’ll know how long it’s been there, and learn how fast it’s degrading into smaller pieces and how fast it’s being colonized by sea life. We also plan to reunite any keepsakes with their owners in Japan.

But right now, it’s all about witnessing power in the ocean. The Typhoon Mawar – ironically, the Malaysian word for Rose, is bearing down on southern Japan generating winds over 110 mph. Now that’s power.

Earlier in the week we traveled north to Sindai and Fukushima, the hardest hit area by the tsunami, to volunteer for tsunami debris removal. Everywhere here there is unimaginable destruction. Piles of cars, harbors with new topography, thousands of abandoned house foundations where the buildings once stood – and the beach, piled with plastic and every manner of human wares. Haunting.

We worked at a woman named Shakido’s house that was buried in the earthquake which caused the tsunami. We took an all night bus to shovel mud and rock, but the reward was amazing. We felt like we were doing something. Something good. Her house had been left empty for almost a year because of radiation aftermath from the reactor meltdown. Shakido is about 80, and right out in front of her house are destroyed rice patty fields. She watched the tsunami flood the fields and destroy them from her front porch. 60 years ago she watched allied planes bomb the city from the same vantage point.

Time heals wounds, and time changes everything. And power shifts.

What I see in Japan is a resilient people who are overcoming an incredible disaster that left 20,000 of their people dead. What I learn from watching them dig out from this disaster is that destruction can be remedied, that pollution can be eliminated, that life must go on. It’s the same for our oceans.

Plastic pollution in the ocean is a human caused problem. It affects marine life and has implications for the human food chain. But like tsunami recovery in Japan, it’s a solvable problem.

On this World’s Ocean Day, remember this: if you divide the amount of plastic produced for the U.S. markets by the population, you get roughly 300 pounds consumed by every woman, man and child annually. The solution to plastic pollution starts with you. But awareness is half the battle.

Take the 5 Gyres Plastic Promise and learn about five simple ways you can reduce your plastic footprint.

The solution starts with you. Be the sea change you want to see, and be part of the powerful movement that looks to a better tomorrow. As trite as it might sound, if you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.

Read more exclusive reports from previous 5 Gyres expeditions on EcoSalon:

The Eye of the Gyre

Garbage, Saints and Whale Sharks of the South Atlantic

Reflections from a Two-Timer: The Final Chapter in a Voyage Through the Atlantic Gyre

Full archive here.

The post Life from the North Pacific: Waiting Out A Typhoon, Following the Path of A Tsunami appeared first on EcoSalon.

seriesPart 3 in a special series on the presence of plastic in our lives.

We all try to do our part. We try to make conscious, low environmental impact choices when we can, but technology has outpaced awareness. Plastic hides everywhere: under our noses, in place sight, in the places we’d least expect. Case in point: a committed java junkie, I try to carry a reusable cup at all times. When I don’t, I order a medium in a large cup, so I can avoid the plastic lid. And then I learned even the paper cups have a thin layer of polyethylene lining.

Most of the scientific literature to date suggests that polyethylene doesn’t leach chemicals, but it doesn’t biodegrade, either, creating a lasting problem. So often, we don’t even know we’re consuming plastic. Even chewing gum contains plastic (poly-vinyl acetate). Check the ingredients; it’s difficult to find a single chewing gum that doesn’t contain a synthetic. Ditto beer. Fans of the hearty, local microbrew will notice the plastic gasket lining the bottle caps of glass bottles. In short: it’s everywhere.

Many face cleansers, for example, utilize plastic in their formulas to work as an abrasive. Everyone wants healthy skin, and we dutifully scrape away those older, dead skin cells to reveal the younger, fresher cells beneath. The plastic particles in the exfoliants wash down the drain, into the rivers and the ocean, where they work as a vector to absorb persistent organic pollutants at highly toxic levels – and can be ingested by fish and bio-magnify up the food chain, right back into tonight’s dinner.

Treatment plants haven’t been able to demonstrate effective capture of these plastic additives, which on personal care labels will go by names like “polyethylene micro-spheres” or “micro-beads.” Brands like Clearasil, Ponds, and Neutrogena all use synthetic exfoliants. (Luckily, there are healthy, green alternatives for younger, fresher skin, from brands like Farm Aesthetics, Burt’s Bees, and Yes to Carrots to homegrown remedies like lemon peel and coffee grounds.)

Coffee, beer, gum, cleansers – does it ever stop? Plastic is even in some brands of whitening toothpaste.

The stuff just doesn’t go away. We’ve been using plastics widely for about 40 years, with consumption spiking about 20 years ago. Within this short span of time, plastic can already be found in every part of the ocean and on every single beach in the world.  It’s made of toxic chemicals. It doesn’t biodegrade. It’s accumulating in every light and dark recess of our reality. And we don’t know what it’s going to do to us yet.

Recycling, far from being an answer, is a myth, one that makes us feel good but doesn’t solve the problem. When we throw “it” away, we have to remember one thing: there is no away. There is only out of sight. As we wash our faces, brighten our smiles, and pound our morning lattes, we’re creating an ever-, over-plasticized environment.

Editor’s note: This is part 3 in a special series on plastic. Read part 2 and part 1.

Image: Nick Harris

The post Plastic: The Forever Wonder Substance appeared first on EcoSalon.

ExclusiveThe clash over plastic, and a surprising industry admission.

The Fifth International Marine held a week ago on Oahu was like the prom for plastic garbage nerds. All sides of the issue converged on Oahu. There were the cool kids (Jack Johnson strumming some tunes), the industry guys sporting pleated pants held up by braided belts (evaporating bad cologne), science dorks walking quickly from point A to point B without so much as noticing the sun, and vociferous activists pumped up on coffee. It was many fish in a small pond, a full net of stakeholders concerned with how the chemical bottom line translates to plastic pollution in our shared ocean. The general tenor of the NGOs was simple: call a spade a spade. Calling plastic pollution ‘marine debris’ is ducking the problem. Calling it what it is, makes people act. And after this conference, I’d expect we’re going to see this issue amplified.

Starting with the Science

What we know, is that we don’t know a lot. Expeditions to sample the ocean surface for plastic are expensive, and precious few have ever made it out of port. I spoke with Kara Lavendar Law, from SEA Education, who has the most data on plastic distribution in the ocean. SEA has been monitoring plankton for over twenty years in the North Atlantic and Caribbean, and as a result, has pulled up a lot of plastic in their samples. While we’ve only really heard about the North Pacific Garbage Patch in the media, there exists much more data on the North Atlantic, thanks to Law and her team. The situation is startling: 6.5 pounds to 184 pounds per square kilometer of water. (There are 315 million square kilometers of ocean on planet earth – and we’ve only been packaging everything we consume in plastic for 40 years.) It’s important to note, however, that outside of the gyres, plastic is still present, but ostensibly in smaller quantities – though this isn’t for certain. From personal experience, having sailed three times across both the North and South Atlantic conducting sampling, I’ve never seen a plastic-free sample.

What’s most surprising about SEA’s data is that it suggests plastic density has flatlined over 20 years. A scientist isn’t going to to go on the record making claims without proof, but she will pose the questions: Where is it going? Is it sinking? Consumption and population are both going up, which means more plastic is going into the ocean, so why is the data flatlining? The plastic has to be going somewhere. Various theories float around at the conference. Nearly every scientist believes that input is getting greater but to date, there has been no comprehensive study of the ocean floor for plastic pollution.

Industry

I spoke with the American Chemistry Council representatives at the conference. Their massive public relations problem is oceanic plastic pollution. These are the guys who have to deal with fourth graders asking them why they kill turtles. The American Chemistry council represents all the companies that produce the resins that the manufacturers make everything plastic out of. They like the “Marine Debris” label because it encompasses all the jetsam in the ocean. But what’s out there is plastic. As if sea turtles weren’t bad enough, there’s the even bigger publicity nightmare: dangerous chemicals in mothers’ breast milk. That’s the kind of issue that drives public outcry and policy that limits their activities on the books.

Mostly, they’ve tried to promote recycling as the solution, even though the capture rates post consumer are so low they almost cease to matter (3-12%) worldwide. The real problem, though, is that recycling doesn’t work. You can’t make a bag out of a bag, and this is hardly an extreme claim from an environmentalist contingent. The industry is well aware of this, which I confirmed when I spoke with Mark Daniels of Hilex Poly, the largest recycler of polyethylene in the country.

Here’s why recycling doesn’t work: to make another bag, 70% virgin content is introduced in the new bag, along with 30% post consumer. The result of recycling one bag roughly introduces 3.3 new bags into the waste stream. Daniels didn’t like that I was using math, but finally, after asking him this question: “So, is this a fair statement: no matter how much you recycle, no matter how much recycling infrastructure you build, the net result of recycling is more plastic in the world, bags or otherwise?” His answer, simply enough, was “Yes.” (I almost fell out of my chair.) By his own admission, the net result of recycling compounds the plastic problem rather than ameliorating it. Daniels used the phrase “Cradle to Cradle” several times and I kept asking him to define what that means. He couldn’t. He’s making three cradles out of one cradle and they’re made of plastic. The interest in recycling is economic, not stewardship. What they fear is that people will quit consuming their products. Recycling is a system neatly built to ensure perpetual consumption by duping people into believing they’re doing something good for the environment.

Now, you can make a PETE bottle out of a PETE bottle, but the regulations to make it food safe again makes it cost prohibitive. For the most part, the only thing that can be made from recycling plastic is another plastic product. Whether they’re durable goods or single-use isn’t really the point. Plastic is plastic.

The NGOs and Activists

These are the people flaming pissed about belly-up sea turtles, bird carcasses with lighters in them, seals strangled by plastic box ties, fish caught in six pack rings. They’re also mad about everyone – you, me, your children – being full of chemicals from plastic. The American Chemistry Council sponsored this conference (as did Coca-Cola), so it appears at least that they’re trying to engage the activist and science community more transparently. As an activist, getting an ACC official on the phone has been an incredibly difficult task and here, at the conference, they were subject to all the major activists working on this issue. They don’t like that we’re going after bans of their products, again, feebly arguing that all we need to do is recycle. Activists in the rabble groaned when an industry representative championed a new plastic bottle made out of plant-based material as progress. Leave it up to the plastic industry to turn organic material into something that doesn’t biodegrade.

Activism starts at home. Refusing single-use plastics, opting instead for the coffee cup or stainless steel bottle, is a big step. Then it’s time to start engaging the businesses you frequent and ask them a simple question, “What are you doing to reduce your plastic footprint?”

Next up in the series, we’ll talk about how much plastic we all use, where it hides, and how to avoid it.

Image: Micro-fragments of plastic the beach of St. Helena, a very remote island in The South Atlantic. Credit: Stiv Wilson

The post Plastic Surgery: Hawaii, Science, NGOs and The American Chemistry Council appeared first on EcoSalon.

seriesThe first in a special series on plastic.

It’s a plastic world and it’s here to stay – the plastic, that is. It clogs our sewers, it litters our beaches, it kills our turtles, it leaches chemicals into our baby bottles (and we’ve recently learned that it’s not just BPA that causes estrogenic activity). But the people who produce and sell this non-biodegradable omnisubstance of our lives sure don’t want you to stop buying, buying, buying. And they’re spending a lot of money to protect their market interest.

In the coming weeks, I’ll be investigating where plastic hides, the powers that protect it, the environmental consequences of widespread adoption, as well as taking a look at alternatives and ways to reduce the plastic footprint. Click through to the slideshow to start the series.

This fall I had the chance to sail across The South Atlantic ocean with pro surfer Mary Osborne, studying plastic pollution in the South Atlantic. I enlisted Mary to the cause and she’s picked up the ball and is running with it, serving now as an ambassador for 5 Gyres. I caught up with Mary recently to chat about what she’s up to in her outreach efforts. To raise plastic use awareness, she has worked with Ventura, California photographer, Angela Izzo to produce this series of portraits with Mary clad in waste packaging.

Says Angela of her inspiration for the series: “By using pop culture imagery and media as an inspiration to create ‘Fantasy’ like scenes and sets, the images entice the viewer to look deeper into the photograph. At once, the viewer is confronted with the actual material being made of plastic trash, and Mary’s iconic image works to target a wider audience who may not be aware of this issue. My goal for this project is to raise awareness of the current plastic devastation confronting our oceans and to encourage change through individual action like bringing your own bag to the store, growing your own food and being mindful of our everyday habits. Together we can make this world a better place.”

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Stay tuned for more synthetic sojourning in the days to come.

The post Plastic Surgery: A Series On Waste, Fashion, Policy And Consumer Culture appeared first on EcoSalon.