Friday, March 31, 2023
The Complexities and Costs of Our Plastic Addiction
Architect Magazine: Does anyone else remember a 1997 “Plastics Make It Possible” commercial? In a 30-second TV spot, a series of tweens narrate various ways that plastics are helpful: A child on rollerblades notes that plastics in his kneepads saved his patella; a kid who looks vaguely like Jonathan Taylor Thomas is stoked that plastic keeps his soda safe. Another child floats through the air holding a bright orange plastic bag. It ends with a little girl thanking plastics for saving her police–officer dad’s life with a bullet-proof vest. Sort of a dark turn, but you get it. Plastics, they make it possible.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
5 comments:
I wish that more people would be aware of the harsh reality that plastics are causing the rapid decline of our health and the environment’s health. I am happy to see that artists are still using their art forms to convey the message of destruction that plastics are causing to ourselves and our environment. The fact that the Norfolk Southern Train derailment still hasn't caused any large changes to happen to our consumption levels and how we as a society consume projects shows how the country is lacking the encouragement to change. I am hopeful that the theatre industry will also realize how harmful plastics have become and use their art form to broadcast this message to the world. According to this article right now we are producing a trillion pounds of plastic per year, and that number could triple by 2050. 2050 is not as far away as we believe, and the thought that this number could triple is frightening. I hope, for the sake of our health and future, that theatre and other industries help to encourage the general public to change their ways to become more sustainable.
I didn’t know what ad this article was referencing as I was not born until three years later, but watching the ad felt almost dystopian at this point considering how anti-plastic the world currently seems to be. I don’t mean the manufacturing world or commercial world or anything like that, but how plastic is being phased out of grocery stores etc… I do feel like we sometimes fail to see the benefits of plastic and how it is utilized as so much focus seems to be on single-use plastics. I have only really ever gave partial thought to plastics in textiles, when thinking about plastic in general I tend to forget what type of percentage of plastic use goes to textiles and wearables. I feel as though we will always struggle to keep plastics to the sector of production that items such as knee pads or hard hats fall under. Although we get these beneficial items from plastic, plastic is also horribly polluting our planet.
Plastic addiction has been something that I've been pretty conscious of for quite a long time now, as Maui is pretty conscious of its overconsumption of unnecessary packaging materials, but I still think it's really important to change things about that over here. freshman year has been a lot of creating art that uses the pretty large amount of materials, and although I've been doing my best to use recycled materials, utilizing places like creative reuse, as well as things that were previously used for Packaging that I had turned into something else, there's definitely a little bit of guilt that I feel when creating these projects. Honestly, before I came here, a lot of the art that I was creating was digital, like the lighting design that I was doing, as well as my photography Hobby, and I was really into dance for quite a few years, none of which actually took up materials other than the ones that I needed to create the pieces in the first place, like my camera, the lights that the school provided me with, and the ballet shoes that I needed to successfully dance.
I remember in basic design class, we read an article about the material theory of plastics. It brought up a lot of interesting points that made me think more about the repercussions of the ever-growing plastic dependence. One point I found particularly intriguing was that plastic has no true form. When you think of plastic, you think of countless different things, but there is not one “true form” you can trace back to. In that sense, plastic can be anything and is everything. People are constantly looking for new ways to make things out of plastic to reduce the cost. The article said that one day, everything will be plastic, even we will be plastic. Obviously, this is not sustainable, but as this article from Architect says, in the current day in age, plastic is essential to daily life. We are completely dependent on it, and it will take many many years to reduce that dependency.
The war against plastic is a continuous struggle and battle that has been occurring since its introduction into society. I feel as though plastic has diminished the luxe and function, ability of many of the items that we use today. It has given the people of the world another way of destroying it due to its non degradable nature and abundance. The use of plastic in our every day lives is continuously fueled by corporations that take pride in giving us cheap materials but non sustainable and non-environmentally friendly devices/items. This article was a great way to showcase artist that exhibited the importance of recycling and using materials that are easily accessible to create art. I find art that highlights human problems such as our plastic addiction to be very beneficial to how we perceive our daily lives. Our obsession with plastic and our increasing boredom with the plastic items that we purchase is truly detrimental to our environment.
Post a Comment