New Waste
Highlighting the ubiquity of waste throughout modern life is both ridiculously easy and depressingly difficult. Look around, waste is literally everywhere.
Mountains of rubbish destined to become landfill, rivers flowing with plastic, huge stacks of white goods and discarded electrical appliances. But could the abundance of these kinds of images work against their intention to warn?
Almost certainly, over exposure and media saturation about the issues surrounding climate change have affected our perception of the crisis. ‘You must recycle, 2 degree rise, runaway temperatures, extreme weather events, rising oceans, millions displaced’. These messages are on a constant loop and we have stopped being able to hear them over the incessant call to save our planet. Do any of us really know where our garbage goes once it’s thrown out, once we can’t see it?
Yet we still embrace consumerism, and in doing so, continue to create new waste at an unprecedented rate. Although many of us recycle, our concern with the leftover waste tends to overlook the environmental impact created during the production of things we consume. The odds are stacked against us and it’s not looking good. Shouldn’t we be more concerned with finding solutions that don’t create waste to begin with? Should we, at the very least, be more concerned? Will we finally listen to the collective voice of today’s youth or is this fresh outrage and concern just part of the latest trend?
This series presents waste items as products of our consumption. Through this representation, the life cycle of a product becomes reversed and our consumer culture existence is confronted with the consequences of our continuous material needs and desires.
Mountains of rubbish destined to become landfill, rivers flowing with plastic, huge stacks of white goods and discarded electrical appliances. But could the abundance of these kinds of images work against their intention to warn?
Almost certainly, over exposure and media saturation about the issues surrounding climate change have affected our perception of the crisis. ‘You must recycle, 2 degree rise, runaway temperatures, extreme weather events, rising oceans, millions displaced’. These messages are on a constant loop and we have stopped being able to hear them over the incessant call to save our planet. Do any of us really know where our garbage goes once it’s thrown out, once we can’t see it?
Yet we still embrace consumerism, and in doing so, continue to create new waste at an unprecedented rate. Although many of us recycle, our concern with the leftover waste tends to overlook the environmental impact created during the production of things we consume. The odds are stacked against us and it’s not looking good. Shouldn’t we be more concerned with finding solutions that don’t create waste to begin with? Should we, at the very least, be more concerned? Will we finally listen to the collective voice of today’s youth or is this fresh outrage and concern just part of the latest trend?
This series presents waste items as products of our consumption. Through this representation, the life cycle of a product becomes reversed and our consumer culture existence is confronted with the consequences of our continuous material needs and desires.