Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “The Blue Whale of Crissy Field”.
If you visit chrissy field in san francisco during the autumn of 2018, you’re bound to see this sculpture, a life-sized replica of a blue whale made entirely of plastic scavenged from the ocean created by artist, joel dean stockdale in association with the monterey bay aquarium. The project is intended to draw attention to the impact of waste plastic on the ocean’s ecology. My name is meredith winter. I’M the co-founder of building 180. building 180 is an arts management and consulting company founded by myself and shannon riley and together we produced this big blue whale sculpture with the artists and have managed the project from the beginning.
Um, the big inspiration came from a blue whale that washed up on the shore of bolinas several years ago. This is an exact replica of that blue whale lengthwise, and we just wanted to bring awareness to the plastic problem in the ocean and ocean conservation. It’S incredible! How much plastic we use as a as a as a society, we collected over four 000 pounds of plastic locally and and recycled it ourselves by sorting it uh in a facility, and it’s brought us much closer to the problem by being faced with having to dig Through trash for months on end and really you know kind of look at ourselves and and how we are, how we are polluting and how we’re contributing to the problem, i’m kyra pawnee, i’m here with monterey bay, aquarium. Well, first of all, it’s really compelling and arresting right. You see this beautiful giant blue whale on the field. It’S it’s a bit of a disconnect because it’s made out of plastic and then you have to ask: why do we have this plastic whale on the field? And the answer is that we are using so much plastic that it’s impacting life in the ocean, from sea birds to turtles to whales, every nine minutes the weight of a blue whale in plastic, which is 300 000 pounds flows into the ocean from land.
Well, we can all take action by using and making less plastic in the first place. Ultimately, we need to shift our thinking away from a disposable lifestyle and see if we can reframe our consumption in ways that emphasize reusing things, and when we can’t reuse things, then we want to ensure that what we dispose of has a viable life ahead of it. So recycling of aluminum and steel and cardboard is a lot more viable in today’s markets than recycling of plastic, and also things that can be returned to the earth by composting are also a lot more sustainable than plastic, well, metals and paper and glass can be turned Back into themselves and recycled indefinitely, but plastic can only be down cycled and turned into lower grade materials and also, ultimately, plastic recycling still lands these materials in the landfill or even worse, in the natural environment once they’re in the environment, then they persist indefinitely because plastic Does not biodegrade, like other materials, i’ve been making changes in my own life, it’s hard to avoid the stuff that is given to us at almost every turn. But when you start shifting your mindset, you can see how many different ways that you can just say. No to plastic, you can refuse it.
You can skip the straw now that california has a law that will reduce the amount of straws that are just handed to you in restaurants. You’Ll find that you don’t need all the plastic that you’re given when i’m on airplanes. I bring my own cup and ask them to fill my water instead of taking their plastic. You just engage in conversations with businesses and tell them that you’d prefer not to have that plastic choose products that are not packaged in disposable plastic and also let businesses know that you appreciate their efforts whenever you do see them taking steps to reduce plastic packaging. You can also let your legislators know, vote the ocean and support officials who are taking steps to change policy so that we are living in a more ocean healthy way. We made the panels by consult, did a lot of research and consulting with precious plastics? Was one community, that’s been, you know, self-recycling and making materials out of plastics for some time. The process that we found was successful is that we sorted the plastic by type and by color we hand sorted.
You know bales that are about 400 pounds of 400 pound bales. We then washed the plastic by hand with a gray water system, shredded it in a modified wood, chipper and then melted the panels into four conventional ovens. And then you get this kind of tacky plastic out of those ovens and you put that plastic into a mold and press one of these diamond shaped panels that you’ll see on the whale.
So there’s 750 panels on the whale and each one took roughly 30 minutes or more the wheel. Also, in addition to the panels, has other recycled elements as well um, we use a lot of food grade barrels um, which are the big 55-gallon barrels, and we found that in the food industry once one of those barrels is used once you’re not allowed to use It again so there’s a really abundance of these barrels that are just um going to waste, and we found a lot of places that were able to to get donations from and and and get extra barrels for the underbelly. What’S next for this project is, we will have it up for three months in chrissy field, um and then it’s it’s built to be toured, so we’re hoping that you know we’ll have someone who else who wants to have the whale at their own property, a public Space, of course, to bring ocean conservation awareness to the public at large. You .