Introducing ‘A Rubbish Idea’ a long term Bluefingers environmental art project inspired by rubbish. Our focus is on marine and beach debris in Ireland; we understand this is a global issue as waste moves around the world with ocean currents. We have learnt that 80% of all waste is dumped inland, then enters our oceans via rivers and streams.
We spent no more than half an hour lightly combing a fifty meter stretch of rocks on the South West coast of Bull Island, Co. Dublin. The River Liffey flows out from Dublin City in that direction so a lot of rubbish gathers along the defensive rock wall.
In this short stretch we collected approximately 400 pieces of rubbish ranging from dolls to cotton buds, household waste and surgical equipment, most of which were plastics.
Masses of waste have been created in the Worlds oceans by converging sea currents. These immense floating dumps are not solid, but appear more like plastic soup, which in the case of the largest in the Pacific Ocean, reach up to 1/3 of the size of Europe. This is having a huge impact on our bio-diversity with fish and birds feeding (and tens of thousands dying) on bottle tops, cigarette lighters and other plastic debris.
When plastics degrade, they end up as tiny chemical polymers that never go away. Plankton and jellyfish eat these polymers, and some places in the ocean have now been shown to have a ratio of 60 percent plastic polymers to 40 percent plankton.
All the plastic, both floating and on the sea bed cannot be collected, there is just too much. However we can help this issue by following 3 basic principles of an old but relevant mantra, reduce, re-use, recycle.
1 Reduce. Try to produce less waste, use a shopping bag, avoid products with excessive wrapping, choose quality equipment which will last longer, avoid disposables.
2 Reuse. Buy and sell second hand, share, hire borrow, give away, don’t throw away.
3 Recycle. Make new objects out of old objects. Use your black bin as little as possible as much of this waste will end up in landfill.
In today’s world, life without plastics is incomprehensible. Every day, plastics contribute to our health, safety and peace of mind but what about when we are done with them?