One small city’s efforts to make the future healthy and clean
It wasn’t bad advice. Research/make/sell plastic. There’s money in plastic. You can do anything with it, except get rid of it. And now, we know, it’s piling up and spreading out and breaking down, and entering our bodies in the food we eat and the water we drink. Plastics, which are so good at keeping our cheese from getting moldy, and for throwing discs at baskets, and making non-magnetic camera bodies and lightweight cars. Plastics that keep our heads dry and our shampoo contained and the soles of our feet protected, those plastics might be our undoing. They are 78% of the make-up of surgical supplies (SWAG stat), so they save our lives, but they can kill us too, so what are we going to do about that?! No, it wasn’t bad advice Benjamin/Dustin received, if you’re in it for the money, and you don’t pay attention to what happens in your children’s children’s world.
Viroqua Plastic Free would like you to know there are alternatives. VPF has been around since 2018. It’s a group of concerned citizens, from middle schoolers to senior citizens, who are educating the rest of us about what is happening, and what can be done. The facts are bleak enough, and they’re plentiful. The local, immediate solutions (“What can I do?!”) are simple (see images). The larger solutions are complicated, which just means we’re going to have to work together to get big things done.
The images that illustrate this post are from a collaboration I did with VPF a few years ago. When we were printing the images, we discussed the best printing surface for the large photos that would be on public display. I suggested a nylon sheet that can be done locally, and surprisingly inexpensively. It would be stretched over a wood frame, and be much sharper than canvas prints. Problem was, nylon is plastic. We chose instead to mount the photos on masonite board, and attach those to ceiling tiles recovered from one of Viroqua’s old downtown movie theaters.
That’s a small win for VPF and DSP.
Soon I will share a post about Maria, from Callao, Peru, who is leading her community to clean up the river and the beach where she swam as a child.
Maria, in blue and white. Walking the beach where the Chillón River empties into the Pacific Ocean. As a child she swam in these waters. Now she is trying to clean them up.
In the meantime, check out Viroqua Plastic Free’s website, get yourself a water filter instead of those cases of plastic, and maybe start (your city here) Plastic Free.
https://www.viroquaplasticfree.org/
*This bit of wisdom was gleaned from a introductory film studies course, or was it an opinion piece in the old City Pages newspaper in Minneapolis?