The plastic flow: from waste to waves

Just as forests provide us with many important natural resources, so do oceans. More than one third of the world’s population lives in coastal areas, and people throughout the world depend intimately on the oceans and coasts, and the resources they provide for survival and well-being. Yet marine ecosystems, and the resources they provide, are increasingly threatened by impacts of the human population.

Our oceans are dynamic systems, made up from complex networks of currents that circulate water around the world. Large systems of these currents coupled with wind and the earth’s rotation create gyres, were all sorts of human litter that washes off to sea end up and accumulate in huge garbage paths.

Around the world, plastic pollution has become a growing plague, clogging our water ways, travelling through mangroves and wreaking havoc on ecosystems as it goes. Plastic pollution has become a hazard to marine life, and ultimately for us.

Essentially,nearly every toy we buy for our children is made of plastic, like almost every food product we consume comes packaged in plastic material. This was the disturbing realization that inspired American artist Lee Lee to address the issue of plastic and participate with her paintings in the Chaco Waves of Change art contest.

“I was inspired to address the plastic issue by my two year old son. As with most parents, I want him to be healthy and I also want him to inherit a living planet”, says Lee Lee.“By simply looking at the materials which fill our lives, and by questioning their impacts on our bodies and environment, I made some drastic lifestyle changes.”

The Chaco Waves of Change is a contest, demonstrating the world’s addiction to single-use plastic through artwork, and rewarding the final artist with the opportunity to go with the 5 Gyres project to the South Pacific Garbage Path.

“Closer to our shores, before the plastic breaks down into tiny bits and caught up in the gyres, plastic bags are eaten by sea turtles and whales, because they look a lot like jellyfish. This inspired my work, Turtles in a Plastic Ocean, which depicts turtles interacting with a landmass literally made of collaged plastic”, explains Lee Lee.

The idea of the plastic-inspired art contest is that change is spurred when people are moved emotionally on a subject – and art moves people emotionally. With art questioning the materials that fill our life and their impacts on our bodies and the environment, we can all in the spirit of World Environment Day make small lifestyle changes with dramatic impacts on the oceans and the marine ecosystems.

So let us prevent the flow of waste to waves in the first place and reduce our plastic footprint.