Every piece of plastic you have used in your life still exists. The piece of cling wrap that your Mum wrapped your assorted creams in before placing them in your (plastic) lunchbox; that yoghurt tub you bought in the second week of October 2001; the garbage bag currently lining your bin, slowly being filled with plastic from your packaged fruit and vegetables. You don’t see it, but it is all still out there. Try to imagine the space your lifetime’s waste occupies in landfill.
According to Greenpeace, on average each Australian produces 1.5 tonnes of waste a year – most of it avoidable. Waste for the sake of convenience is threatening to strangle us, like a plastic ring from a milk bottle around a sea birds neck!
This drawing, from the series Anthropocene Me, is an exploration of waste in our modern era. The epoch of the Anthropocene is defined by the impact that humans have had on the Earths geology and ecosystems and is commonly thought to have commenced from the Industrial Revolution.
In this drawing, Linda Crispin examines an individual’s contribution to the exponential increase of waste in our current age, highlighting the absurdity of waste – for convenience sake.
