Plastics are not only pervasive in terms of their appearance in our homes as products, but also in our environment. Frighteningly enough, approximately 10% “by weight of the municipal waste stream is plastic… [and such discarded] plastic also contaminates a wide range of natural terrestrial, freshwater and marine habitats, with newspaper accounts of plastic debris on even some of the highest mountains” (Thompson et al. 2009).  

 

Certain types of plastics, such as “phthalates[,] can leach out of products because they are not chemically bound to the plastic matrix” (Wagner & Oehlmann 2009; Talsness et al. 2009).  Phthalates and BPA, another plastic by-product, are detectable in aquatic environments, in dust and, because of their volatility, in air (Rudel et al. 2001, 2003); “every year, 8 million metric tons of plastic end up in our oceans” (CareSAFCoastal, 2015).  In America “only 8 percent of [the plastic we discard] gets recycled.  The rest ends up in landfills, is incinerated, or becomes the invasive species known as ‘litter’” (plasticpollutioncoalition, 2016).  Furthermore, these littered “plastics represent [50 to 80%] of shoreline debris” (Thompson et al. 2009).  This “plastic debris kills an estimated 100,000 marine mammals annually, as well as millions of birds and fishes” (CareSAFCoastal, 2015).  “Entanglement, ingestion and habitat disruption” (plasticpollutioncoalition, 2016) are a few of the many destructive effects plastic buildup in the environments has on wildlife.  Plankton are “eating microplastics and absorbing their toxins.  [This] displaces nutritive algae that creatures up the food chain require” (plasticpollutioncoalition, 2016), therein interfering with the food chain.  This affects us too.  Thanks to these pollutants, “plastic leachate full of toxic chemicals [seeps] into groundwater and [flows] downstream into lakes and rivers” (plasticpollutioncoalition, 2016) which are more often than not the source of our drinking water.  It has reached the point where “[chemicals] leached by plastics are in the blood and tissue of nearly all of us.  [This exposure] is linked to cancers, birth defects, impaired immunity, endocrine disruption and other ailments” (plasticpollutioncoalition, 2016).  

 

So, how can we bring awareness to the issue of plastics pollution while simultaneously working to eliminate it?  The answer is found through art:  For centuries, artists have conveyed societal and cultural issues through their work.  Such artists, like Leonard Cohen, reflected and instigated cultural and societal change involving historically significant places or times like the Silk Road in ancient Asia or political and social misdirection in the 1900s (A. F. 2016).  We can utilize this trait and bring change to our plastics issue by creating art that reflects it.