So Much Garbage

Part of an art exhibition on Nye Beach, this fish was made of pieces of plastic collected on nearby beaches. (Photo: Maureen Carr)

The new header photo on Plasticulous is a detail from Maureen Carr’s photo, So Much Garbage. The plastic in the header was found on Nye Beach in Newport, Oregon and rearranged into the fish pictured here.  Man, the construction of the fish must have taken forever!

I looked for a while for a photo to use as the header and while there are quite a few (well, a lot) of photos of plastic out there, most of them are really depressing.  Hey, I don’t need to run away from the facts, but I don’t need to see a photo of ensnared turtles, pigs foraging through plastic garbage, children swimming in ponds of bottles and all of that to know that plastic in the environment is a big deal.

I could have turned to the recycling industry for help, but their photos are hum-drum depictions of plastic bottles waiting for another “happy” life. It’s all just going to end up in a landfill or forest or body of water anyway, but that’s perhaps a topic for another entry.  Remind me.

What I found in Maureen Carr’s photo in the header satisfied the need to stick to the established theme, but it didn’t smack me in the face every time I looked at it. There is entirely too much smacking out there – we don’t need that sort of thing on Plasticulous, do we? There is something, however, that is utterly, plasticulous about the image that Maureen captured.  Who has the time to drill all of those holes in all of those tiny pieces of plastic? Clearly those folks don’t spend enough of their days at the Rogue Brewery. It is also crazy to think that all of that plastic was found on one beach in a small town on the Oregon coast. I suppose the regulars on that beach could tell us that the fish is just a small fraction of what washes up each year.

Ultimately what I appreciate about the photo, however, is that a group of folks took the nasty thing that is ocean-bound plastic and made something really awesome looking.  Hell, I’d love to see that fish swimming down a street in Lancaster, wouldn’t you?

My kids love the BBC cartoon, Rastamouse. What’s so great about Rastamouse is that he, to paraphrase his theme song, works with his pals, the Easy Crew, to make the bad things good.  While it may be tough to say that making a fish out of ocean-bound plastic makes a bad thing all the way good, it’s a start.  Cheers to the folks in Newport. And thanks to Maureen for being there to take the shot.

Hell, I can’t resist…