One of the hardest things for me to accept at the recent Aussie blogger’s conference, was having to drink out of a plastic water bottle all weekend. I forgot to pack my stainless steel water bottle and I felt uncomfortable using the plastic, even though I re-used the same plastic bottle and brought it home with me, it still grated.
My lovely Scientist friend Dr Jenn Lavers, came to visit me in the Off Centre Gallery on Saturday and she gave me a bag of plastic that had been recovered from the stomachs of dead shearwater chicks. I kept the bag on the desk all day and had lots of interesting conversations about plastic pollution with a variety of people. Some people even went so far as to walk out of the gallery and hunt up their friends and partners and bring them back into the shop.
We all commented on the irony of the plastic pollution being displayed in a plastic snap lock bag. This plastic that you can see in the photo below came out of the stomachs of three of our Australian Flesh Footed Shearwaters on Lord Howe Island.
That is a lot of fucking plastic.
As a Scientist, Jenn either removes the plastic from the dead birds, or she forces the chicks to vomit up the plastic.
This plastic came from dead birds.
The plastic industry would like this Plastic Pollution to be called marine debris as that sounds nicer.
I want you all to remember that when the words marine debris are used, it really is Plastic Pollution and we can’t just gloss over this tragedy that is happening right under our own noses.
The level of micro plastic in the worlds oceans out numbers plankton by a staggering 6-1
Six to fucking one.
Because plastic is a resin it attracts all the toxins in our oceans to itself and becomes a deadly poison pill, chocker block full of DDT and every other chemical nasty that you can possibly imagine. This deadly poison pill is being ingested at the foundation level of the food chain and ultimately is poisoning all the creatures that live in the ocean.
I could dig up miles and miles of data for you and pepper it all through this post but that would take the rest of the day.
These couple of links are pretty interesting and will send you off on any number of directions.
Pete at Midway
Midway Journey
The Plastic pollution is a global problem and we will never remove all this pollution from our oceans but we can certainly stop more going in.
Chris Jordan has done a wonderful job of raising awareness of the enormity of the plastic pollution in the pacific gyre and the plight of the albatross that breed on the Midway Atolls.
I want to concentrate on the plastic pollution that is a bit closer to home.
If you drive along the highway and notice the plastic on the side of the road and then you think that there is a pretty good chance of that plastic going into the ocean there is a real risk of feeling overwhelmed.
So just remember that from little things big things grow and each of us has enormous influence within our own circle of family and friends, colleagues, school associates, etc etc.
I have started to do what I can do within my sphere of influence by writing out my thoughts on this blog and by making some more “dead bird bowls”
I initially made the dead albatross bowls in response to Chris Jordan’s photos of the dead albatross chicks on Midway atoll. I then made the oiled bird bowl in response to the oil catastrophe in the gulf of Mexico.
I am now making some more bird bowls in response to the deadly bag of plastic I have at home.
Here are some photos to show you where I am at, the quality of the photos is a bit dodgy because I get so immersed in the making of the work that the photos are always an after thought. Sorry about that.
And once again just for luck, the plastic itself.
