Ocean Waste Benjamin Farren + Deborah Hahn + Celynne Hebron Word + - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Ocean Waste

Benjamin Farren + Deborah Hahn + Celynne Hebron Word + Image April 18, 2018

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is a collection of marine debris in the North Pacific Ocean. Discovered in the mid-1980s, it’s full of plastics, chemical sludge, and other man-made debris trapped by currents. While higher concentrations of litter items can be found in this area, along with other debris such as derelict fishing nets, much of the debris is actually small pieces of floating plastic that are not immediately evident to the naked eye.

“In the central North Pacific Gyre, pieces of plastic outweigh surface zooplankton by a factor of six to one.”

Captain Charles Moore

Paper Cups by Chris Jordan

While statistics can feel abstract and anesthetizing, Jordan translates them into a more universal visual language that can be felt. Employing themes such as the near versus the far, and the one versus the many, Jordan raises questions about the roles and responsibilities we each play as individuals in a collective that is increasingly enormous, incomprehensible, and

• verwhelming.

“These are numbers that

• ur brain just doesn’t

have the ability to

• comprehend. We can’t

make meaning out of these enormous

• statistics. If we can feel

these issues, if we can feel these things more deeply, then they’ll matter to us more than they do now.”

Chris Jordan

Midway: Message from the Gyre by Chris Jordan

On Midway Atoll, a remote cluster of islands more than 2000 miles from the nearest continent, the detritus of our mass consumption surfaces in an astonishing place: inside the stomachs of thousands

• f dead baby albatrosses. The nesting chicks are fed lethal quantities of plastic by their parents, who

mistake the floating trash for food as they forage over the vast polluted Pacific Ocean.

“Fish and seabirds mistake plastic for food. Plastic debris releases chemical additives and plasticizers into the ocean. Plastic also adsorbs hydrophobic pollutants like PCBs and pesticides like DDT. These pollutants bioaccumulate in the tissues of marine organisms, biomagnify up the food chain, and find their way into the foods we eat.”

Captain Charles Moore

Sea Chair by Studio Swine

The garbage in the ocean is not so much a patch, but a soup of tiny pieces floating in a collective. Studio Swine imagines collecting them and pressing them together like particle board and making new products. They built a sluice contraption to help sort these particles, much like miners would pan for gold.

“This plastic takes thousands of years to degrade, remaining in the environment to be broken up into ever smaller fragments by

• cean currents.”

Studio Swine

Since 1964, the production of plastic has increased twenty-fold to 311m tonnes in

• 2014. It expected to quadruple by 2050.

Despite such a large amount of plastic being produced, only 5% are recycled effectively (continuous loop) while a third ends up in the ocean. It is estimated that about 8 million tonnes

• f plastics leak into the ocean, which equals

to dumping one garbage truck loaded with trash into the ocean every minute. It is estimated to increase four every minute in 2050.

The Guardian: “More Plastic than Fish in the Sea by 2050 says Ellen MacArthur”

“Plastic water bottles were first created and commercially used in 1947. That means if a plastic water bottle was dropped into the ocean the very first year that plastic bottles were created, it is still floating somewhere and will not be "completely gone" until the year 2397.”

• 4Ocean

The Ellen MacArthur Foundation

The Ellen MacArthur foundation is a British charity aiming to accelerate the transition of our linear economy to a circular economy. This charity launched in 2010 by Ellen MacArthur, a retired English sailor who broke the world record for the fastest solo circumnavigation of the globe in 2005. This charity aims to inspire the younger generation to rethink, redesign, and create a positive future through the framework

• f a circular economy.

In 2017, the foundation launched a design challenge that awarded six winners a total of one million dollars. This challenge focused on plastics that were too small or complex to be recycled efficiently and often found their way into the ocean. The challenge included rethinking of plastic packaging in groceries, redesigning sachets, and re-inventing coffee-to-go. One winner such as Evoware, an Indonesian startup, designed food wrappings and sachets made out of seaweed-based materials that can be dissolved or eaten together with the food.

In Pormpuraaw, Queensland, an aboriginal community is raising awareness of ocean plastic and waste by creating art with ghost

• nets. Near the shores of Pormpuraaw called

the Bunnings, a large pile of debris wash up

• n shore along with numerous sea turtles,

fish, and rays. Due to the large amount of plastics surrounding their village, their main food source from fishing is becoming more scarce. In order to survive and continue fishing, the whole community works together to weave large sculptures with ghost nets that portray sea animals that hold significance to their culture.

Ghost Net Art

A sawfish made from artist Side Bruce Short Joe. The material was collected collected from the shores of Pormpuraaw. Once abundant, artist Sid Bruce Short Joe tries to raise awareness of how hard it is to spot a sawfish today due to ocean debris. A sawfish serves as a special totem for his tribe as the Pormpuraaw people eat sawfish when mourning for the dead.

• 2014 Fashion Design award. BID14_4ª

Iberoamerican Design Biennial.

• Founded in 2012 by Javier Goyeneche
• Fashion company devoted to procuring

and recycle otherwise-harmful materials

• Recycles plastic bottles, coffee grounds

fishing nets, tires, cotton, and wool

• Approached 29 seaports to collect trash

that fishermen encounter in the oceans

• 2014 National Design Award

Wake Up and Smell the Coffee

• The average daily consumption of coffee

is 3.1 cups per day.

• The average total consumption of coffee

per day is 587,000,000 cups

• This is enough coffee grinds for

29,350,000 meters of recycled fabric

• This is enough recycled fabric for

14,675,000 jackets per day

A Little • Perspective •

• Selling 587 Million cups of coffee at a rate of 1

cup per second would take over 18 years.

• To visualize 29.35 Million Meters, imagine

driving to New York and back 3 times, starting a 4th trip and stopping in Kansas.

• With 15 Million jackets, you could clothe

every resident in New York City. Twice.

• https://ecoalf.com/fabrics/coffee-grounds/
• https://ecoalf.com/history/#Award
• https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2013/04/09/coffee-mania/2069335/
• http://wedreambusiness.org/Ecoalf-Recycled-Fabrics-S-L.html

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