An upcoming show at Von Lintel Gallery by Chris Jordan sends home the message yet again about the reality of our massive consumption of all kinds of things, bringing visual form to the numbing statistics. Jordan's series Running the Numbers An American Self-Portrait should be yet another a wake-up call, even to those of us with all the right concerns in all the right places, or so we think. We support green everything, but probably give little thought to our discarded cell phones and water bottles. Two million plastic beverage bottles in the U.S. alone EVERY FIVE MINUTES. What are we thinking? We're not.
While about 30% of plastic soda bottles are recycled, only 12% of water bottles are. Overall, our total recycling of plastic has dropped dramatically in recent years, from 53% in 1994 to 19% in 2003. And you would think it would be the opposite. In the early 90's, I gave a talk on recycling to my mom's ladies group in central Missouri. Soon after, the town set up some recycling bins. But after a short time, they gave up - it was too hard, too expensive, too whatever, so now there is no recycling done in that community, and it seems this trend is common.
Now that green is a very hot, fashionable trend (one of the best marketing tools we've ever seen, especially in the housing industry where developments are sold as green, but not always certified), it's great that Jordan's work shows us what we are really up against.
photo below: Chris Jordan, Plastic Bottles, 2007
this depicts the 2 million plastic beverage bottles used every five minutes in the U.S.
And in case we've forgotten:
