(There are a lot of pics in this post, so I am going hide the bulk of it to save space. Just click on “read more” to get the whole post!)
Since I haven’t had cable since May 20, 2007 (but who’s counting?), I have to get fixes for my favorite shows in other ways. Netflix delivers Law and Order one disc at a time and ABC and NBC have new episodes of programs viewable online. But since I don’t want to pay $1 an episode for my Colbert Report and Daily Show fix, I’m stuck watching 5 minute guest spots online.
Today, I finally caught up with about a month of Colbert report and saw some awesome stuff. In light of my recent epiphany (which I now realize I haven’t shared with you and will do so in a later post) and newfound drive to lead a more eco-friendly life style, one guest in particular really stood out.
Chris Jordan is a photographer who takes pictures of garbage. Our garbage. Our American consumer garbage. The point of his art is to shed light on how much waste consumers produce every day–or, rather, every hour, minute, or second. Take this one as an example:
Looks like a pretty accurate representation of Seurat’s A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, right? But if you look closer (like Jordan did for viewers on the Colbert Report), you’ll see that the image is made up of aluminum cans.
To be precise, the image includes 106,000 aluminum cans, or the number of cans that American’s go through every 30 seconds. And if that isn’t enough to gross you out, just remember that only around 50% of the aluminum cans used get recycled each year. (This number is higher–around 80%– in states like Iowa using a deposit system. Check out this site for more stats on can recycling.)
Okay, just a couple more from me, but I encourage you to visit the site and check this stuff out. It’s very interesting and eye-opening.
This image depicts a sea of 2 million plastic beverage bottles, the number that the US uses every 5 minutes.
And this is 60,000 plastic shopping bags, which US consumers use every 5 minutes.
Man. I just don’t have any words left for this. But it really makes one think about their impact on the environment, huh?
Filed under: Environment | Tagged: art
