Recycling into art: the scale of the problem

Cans Seurat by Chris JordanLast week’s post on HA Schult’s Trash People reminded me of something I saw on Alice in Blogland‘s blog a few months ago (Alice is a regular commenter on this site and was the one that suggest we should make the reverse Recycle This idea a regular thing – hi Alice! :) )

Anyway, she linked to the awesomely amazing work by photographer Chris Jordan, which really illustrates the scale of the problem we face when it comes to trash.

His “Running the Numbers” exhibition combines awesome visuals with statistics about usage/wastage in contemporary America – for example, his ‘Cans Seurat’ picture “Depicts 106,000 aluminium cans, the number used in the US every thirty seconds”. (It covers other social issues too – for example, gun-related deaths per year and the amount of children in the US without health care.)

Speaking about his previous exhibition ‘Intolerable Beauty: Portraits of American Mass Consumption’, Chris said:

“The pervasiveness of our consumerism holds a seductive kind of mob mentality. Collectively we are committing a vast and unsustainable act of taking, but we each are anonymous and no one is in charge or accountable for the consequences. I fear that in this process we are doing irreparable harm to our planet and to our individual spirits.”

Related Categories

art & crafts using recycled stuff, packaging

Search for other related items



One Response to “Recycling into art: the scale of the problem”


  1. Alice says:

    Oooh, hello!

    Glad you like the Chris Jordan thing.

    I’d love to do more “reverse” recycle posts because I often buy things deliberately in packaging I know I’ll be able to re-use, e.g. I go for things in small glass jars because I know I’ll make jam in summer so will use them.



Leave a Reply

Your name
Your email (it will not be published. If you want people to contact you, leave your email address in the message too.)
Your website (if you've got one)