Waste Stream 5 Detail

Image by Urban Woodswalker
"Waste Stream"
Wall Hanging by Mary Anne Enriquez 2009

Wherever there are humans, there is unwanted debris found in urban, industrial, suburban, agricultural, and "pristine" wilderness regions. Fishermen might leave behind lead sinkers, nylon fishing line, food and drink cans in "natural areas."
Unresponsible campers, tourists, highway litterers, the homeless, just plain people like you and me, children…its impossible not to create waste that can wind up in public places. Mankind’s waste leaches chemicals into the soil – ultimately into rivers, lakes, and oceans –affecting us all.

I spent 1 year saving "trash" in and around my own daily life. Mostly the trash is my own, but a little bit is from the street, waste receptacles, or on the sidewalk. I then encased this colorful often recognizable detritus and created fish.

Fish are an indicator species of how unhealthy our water and environment is. Water is a carrier of waste from long distances a way. Water is absolutely necessary to all life on earth. The play on words "waste stream" is to make the viewer think about how our daily lives affect the entire planet.

Materials used:

– steel office staples & clear vinyl… encapsulate advertising, popular culture, artifact, and unwanted waste.

– tree branch – a highly invasive non-native shrub called European Buckthorn, Rhamnus Cathartica, was cut down by the Forest Preserve of Cook County Illinois. I found it in a restoration pile of branches along a roadside.

– lead sinkers, and nylon fishing line (both poison/ kill a large amount of wildlife each year)

Materials used to stuff the fish:

– paper ( magazines, junk mail, office waste, newspapers etc)
– cardboard packaging, (cereal boxes and food packaging)
– plastic of all kinds
– candy wrappers
– wood and metal "found" objects

Show is up until July 31, 2009 in Hammond, Indiana.

Use Recycling Waste Bins!

Despite all the media hype, the state of the environment is a genuine worry for us all â?? or should be.  Did you know that it is estimated within the next two years almost every landfill in the UK will be full?  Perhaps this isnâ??t a surprise to those of us who are aware that the average family produces around twenty-five kilograms of waste every single week!  Combined, that mass of waste includes a million loaves of bread, four and a half million apples and five million potatoes every single day!  

Yet despite the huge amount of rubbish being buried in the ground, half the contents of most waste bins can be recycled, which could also save huge amounts of energy!  Itâ??s fashionable for people to go about houses turning plugs off to save small amounts of energy, but recycling just one tin can could save enough energy to power the average TV for three hours!  Recycled paper takes seventy percent less energy to create than conventional paper, yet bags made from recycled paper have a forty percent high volume than plastic bags, which take thousands of years to degrade!  The statistics in favour of recycling are simply staggering!  So why donâ??t more of us do it?

Surveys indicate that ninety percent of people who donâ??t recycle said they would if it was made easier.  In my opinion, this is the most disgusting statistic of all!  As if a short drive (or even a long drive!) is too much to ask for the massive impact that each family can have by recycling!  

Essentially all we each have to do is dedicate an hour per week to sensible waste disposal and we can change the way the world is heading â?? how is that possibly too much to ask?!  Given the amount of hours we spend watching TV, canâ??t we afford to sacrifice just one per week in order to save enough energy to power our TVs for a month?!  Or, more importantly, to help save the entire planet?!

The ugly truth is that the world isnâ??t going to get any better on its own.  In fact, itâ??s getting worse and worse at an ever-increasing rate.  The rapidly growing population and prevalence of non-biodegradable packaging in fast foods means there will be even more waste in a few years than there is now, yet there will be nowhere for it to go!  Iâ??m not sure if people quite understand the implications of that statement, so Iâ??ll say it again; there will be NOWHERE for the waste to go!  Even if there were more landfills (which there arenâ??t), the negative impact of filling huge parts of the land with waste is almost unimaginable!  Everybody correlates greenhouses gasses of fossil fuels, but they forget that gargantuan piles of rubbish also give off greenhouse gases, as well as poisoning the ground and surrounding wildlife!

The only solution is recycling â?? it makes a massive difference and is so easy to do!  Around eighty percent of the population have plastic bins outside of their house; the green one is for recycling.  If you just keep your materials separate and put them in the green bin, they will be recycled for you – how much easier can it possible be?!  If you donâ??t have a recycling bin, youâ??ll have a recycling centre within a few miles so just make some effort!  There really is no excuse for not doing your part to help rescue the environment from the problems that we have caused.

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