Posts tagged ‘pollution’
We’ve all seen dumpsters overflowing with cardboard, trashbags, plastics, and all different kinds of trash. We have also seen all of these things littered in the streets, possibly staining our beautiful city. Because of this, many people have the connotation that trash is something that we should hate and something that we should think is ugly. However, many artists have taken trash on as their materials to create masterpieces that not only look magnificent, but help raise awareness to environmental issues.
For example, the “Waving Wall” is a street art piece that uses 1200 19-liter water bottles to create this “waving wall” and to highlight how the issues of how there are hidden quantities of water used to produce the products we buy. For example, 1200 19-liter water bottles can be used to produce only two pairs of jeans. In my opinion, I prefer seeing the “Waving Wall” over wasting that much water on only two pairs of jeans.
This sense of using street art made out of garbage helps shape the public’s opinion. It not only shows them something cool and unique by using garbage to create art, but it raises awareness and gets them thinking about their consumption choices and how they get rid of/use their own garbage and trash. As you can watch in the video below, turning trash into art is something that many people find interesting and cool and it shows how there are better, more interesting ways to use trash than to just throw them in the nearest alleyway.
In my opinion, while it is clearly unrealistic for every person to create something with their old garbage and trash, I think that this shows that there are some uses for trash that many people may be overlooking. While we might not all be artists, there are ways for us to reuse certain household items in order to reduce the ever growing amount of pollution.
For more examples of cool art made from garbage, follow this link: http://edition.cnn.com/2012/03/16/world/environmental-green-art/index.html
When you walk into any college campus dining hall, there is always a multitude of beverage choices available to satisfy your thirst: various sodas, juices, energy drinks, and, of course, water. But what if one day, the water was gone? This is becoming a reality on college campuses across the United States thanks to students supporting campaigns that ban bottled water, like Ban the Bottle. Colleges like the University of Vermont, Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota, and Humboldt State University in California are among the 20 or so schools to implement bottled water bans.
The International Bottled Water Association is not exactly thrilled with this idea, and in response, created a video for Youtube that clears up some “inaccuracies” about bottled water.
Fracking… sounds inappropriate, right? Well many environmental activists believe that it is. Fracking is a term that refers to hydraulic fracturing, a method of extracting natural gas from deep underground formations. The extraction method has caused many environmental problems and poses a threat to wildlife and people who live near the fracking sites.
“My Water’s on Fire Tonight” is a music video created by a team of students at Studio 20, NYU’s school of journalism, to address this controversy. The main issue that the song focuses on is the seepage of gas and toxic chemicals from the fracking fluid into fresh water supplies. In the documentary Gasland, people are shown lighting their tap water on fire because of the contamination.
Chris Swain swimming the Hudson
These days, there is always something going on where the goal is to raise money, awareness, and attention to some sort of cause. 5ks for animal shelters, silent auctions for cancer survivors, and raffle tickets for your local library are all great places to invest in. However, it’s not too often that we see someone taking weeks on end to do nothing but simply bring attention to a cause, as in the case of Chris Swain. read more…
