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.

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

• f our mass consumption surfaces in an astonishing place: inside the stomachs of thousands of 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.”

Thomas M. Kostigen

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.

Mining Landfills

“In the UK alone, 2 billion tons of waste sit untouched in landfills. In the US, more than 4.6 million tons of electronic waste were disposed of in American landfills. Such material has potential to provide a new supply for declining supplies of metals such as the platinum group elements and rare earths, both of which are found frequently in electronic products.”

Making a Trashion Statement

Designer Marina DeBris uses trash gathered from beaches in Los Angeles, California and Sydney, Australia as a tongue-in-cheek way

• f bringing awareness to the trash

epidemic in our oceans.

Ecoalf Recycled Materials

• Starbucks coffee collectively serves 8,070,428

cups of coffee per day, enough for 403,521.4 meters of Ecoalf fabric

• An average men’s jacket requires two meters of

fabric

• Ecoalf could make 201,760.7 jackets PER DAY

from Starbucks grinds alone

Not Just for Coffee Beans

Through Ecoalf’s methods, fishing nets can be harvested from the ocean to create clothing instead of strangling marine life

Photo courtesy Ecoalf.com

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

• 2014. It expected to quadruple by 2050.

Plastic can be recycled; however, it is a small percentage compared to the overall amount that is thrown away and end up in a landfill or the ocean. Wastes end up in the ocean in several ways: littering, poor transportation of wastes, and industrial leakage.

The Guardian: More Plastic than Fish in the Sea by 2050

“Despite the growing demand, just 5% of plastics are recycled effectively, while 40% end up in landfill and a third in fragile ecosystems such as the world’s

• ceans.”

The Circular Economy

The Ellen MacArthur foundation is a charity aiming to accelerate the transition of our present-day economy to a circular

• economy. A circular economy is a concept

for a truly sustainable waste system that works without trashing our environment and resources. Damaged and unwanted goods are not seen as wastes, but as raw materials for a new production cycle. This foundation is significant because it provides interdisciplinary courses to taking the first steps of creating less waste for environments like the ocean.

“Plastics in the ocean are a clear sign of a broken system, as this was never intended to

• happen. That is why rethinking the way we

make and use plastics is so crucial: how can we capture the material’s benefits, retain its value and make sure it does not end up where it does not belong?”

Ghost Net Art by the Pormpuraaw Community

“Thrown overboard by fishers, they are known as “ghost nets”, eerie death traps that float through the currents, entrapping and killing marine life.” Most trash and ghost nets end up at the Bunnings, a specific location near the shore

• f Pormpuraaw, Queensland. Due to the

large amount of plastic covering the beach and the sea life decreasing, the Pormpuraaw community collects these wastes to create art so that they can raise awareness of ocean waste, share their traditions, and help their community financially.

Each art piece is believed as a totem, an emblem connecting the artists and the community to their past ancestors. As they try to connect their art to their traditions, at the same time, the Pormpuraaw community raises awareness of the diminishing sea life affected by the ghost nets and ocean waste.