Several years ago I interviewed Andrew Newman of the John Burroughs School faculty about his projects that some call "Plastic Islands" which are located in oceans and some rivers as well.
Newman is a professional photographer who teaches photography at the school and is the schools' official photographer. Newman works closely with the students to study the environment and the effects of pollution, global warming and such issues. They work together to try to improve and encourage proper recycling.
Newman spent time on two different sabbaticals sailing and photographing these huge garbage patches in the ocean. In one case he travelled from Hawaii to Vancouver Island to study the great garbage patch which scientific researchers say is 620 thousand square miles and contains plastic which is over 50 years-old. Among the items are plastic lighters, baby bottles, cell phones, plastic bags and even large items such as tires and chairs. He even talked about the wooden fibers from toilet paper which is flushed into the ocean daily.
Samples were collected in small nets and Newman took photographs of what he saw and collected to have an art exhibition at the Bonsack Gallery at John Burroughs School.
Newman even talked about all the fish that had ingested plastic which appeared when the fish were cut open. He also talked about documentaries and one stands out in my mind called "Albatross" which is a powerful and shocking film about baby albatross birds which were found dead on one of the most remote islands on the planet. There were tens of thousands of these birds lying dead with their insides filled with plastic.
Shortly after interviewing Newman an article on litterbugs appeared in the St. Louis Post Dispatch. Written by Kevin McDermott, it is titled "From the depths of the ocean to outer space, humanity leaves a messy mark."
McDermott says, "Every person in America, on average, produces 1700 pounds of garbage per year. Humanity creates the equivalent of more than 800 thousand Olympic sized swimming pools full of the stuff annually. In addition to chronic landfill issues and multiple massive floating ‘garbage patches’ on the oceans (one is twice the size of Texas), the world's space bearing nations are now dealing with the proliferation of space junk: close to 2,000 dead satellites and hundreds of millions of pieces of debris, all of it encircling the globe like a trashy halo.”
We have always been litterbugs. While other animals leave behind their bones and pretty much nothing else, humans have been leaving behind our trash since before the dawn of civilization. Archeologists and anthropologists have learned much about pre-historic humans through discarded stone tools, arrowheads and broken shards of pottery. Historians consider long buried trash dumps to be treasure troves for understanding societies from the Roman Empire to Medieval Europe to Colonial America.
Even now various nations and private companies are working on technology to clean up space with robotic garbage trawls that will collect debris and dump it into the atmosphere where it can safely burn up. Maybe it will even be pretty to watch from Earth. Or at least better than watching garbage bags fall from the sky.
In the spring issue of “National Parks” was an article, "From Sea Scraps to Sculpture." Melanie D.G. Kaplan says, "Artists transform marine debris into art educating national park visitors in the process."
In 2023 a 14-foot shark turned up on the beach of Cape Cod National Sea-Shore. The tip of her snout was an old Nike sneaker, her teeth were pointy plastic bottoms of beach umbrellas, her eyes were swim goggles and her sleek body was broken into colorful panels of lighters, markers, straws, golf balls and plastic utensils. She has been named Sugar, but locals call her Mama Shug. A nearby sign clarified her pedigree: "100% unnatural materials."
"Art can tell a story differently than graphs and statistics," said sculptor Cindy Pease Roe who created Mama Shug from debris collected by volunteers along the park's 40 miles of shoreline. "You look at a sculpture and once you're up close, you see what it is made of," she said. "You see beach chairs and lighters and plastic bottles that were on the beach and then washed up on someone else's beach."
Mama Shug is just one of the eye-catching, albeit trashy, art installations that have popped up at 11 coastal national park sights thanks to a five year partnership between the National Park Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The project which launched in 2020 with funding from NOAA aims to raise awareness about the prevalence of trash in oceans and the Great Lakes. Already tens of thousands of visitors have interacted with these displays, and many more will see the exhibits when four more installations will be unveiled at National Park of American Samoa, Sleeping Dunes National Lakeshore, Lewis and Clark National Historical Park and Virgin Islands National Park.
Mariah Reading an artist and worker on one of these projects says, "The artists and park staff at her project know that these works of art and exhibits won't turn the tides on marine debris on their own. But big changes start with small steps. And Reading is hopeful that these projects will offer visitors "a boost of inspiration to leave their communities better than they found it."
All of these statistics and art projects tell a fascinating story, but we all have to work hard to find better solutions for recycling and helping keep our planet as clean as we can.
Nancy Kranzberg has been involved in the arts community for more than forty years on numerous arts related boards.