Monday 14 September 2020

Life with less plastic




 This week's mural is one I found on our last visit to MOTAT. According to information found from the Auckland City Council, this particular one was painted by Australian/New York based artist "Vexta".  It is based on a mediation of ideas, dreams, plastic particles and the interconnectness of life. 

In 2016 MOTAT commissioned a number of murals to make the site more vibrant and appealing for their visitors. This mural named "A world without plastic" is part of a partnership with Pangeaseed's "Seawalls: murals for oceans" which was an international event that took place of that year. 

Here in NZ, plastic bags of a certain width and weight with handles have been banned. So in supermarkets you can only use the thin plastic bags for vegetables, meat is obviously enclosed in plastic - if you go through the checkout they only supply paper bags or reusable bags that you have to buy or you can bring your own bags.  But we still have a long way to go, companies need to get in on the act by not wrapping every single product in plastic.

Linking up with Mural Monday and Our World Tuesday.

15 comments:

Tom said...

...I remember the movie, The Graduate and Dustin Hoffman was told that the future was PLASTIC!

Iris Flavia said...

Good one. But people are lazy. I see so many using plastic. Be it cups, be it bags. It´s irony! They bring bottles to recycle in a plastic bag, dispose the bag and buy a new one at the cash out for their groceries and... bummer: young uni-students (as in Germany they´re in their 20s).
I don´t want to exaggerate, I only saw this a couple of times, yet, it is "plural". And sad.

Amy said...

The govt here ended up banning plastic bags of a certain weight with handles here, i.e. supermarket bags so people either bring their own reusable or buy a resuable bag but there is so much more work to do with so many products being packed in plastic.

NatureFootstep said...

lol, Without plastic sounds good to me :) There is too much of it these days.

PerthDailyPhoto said...

How good would that be Amy, less plastic! You found a super mural with an excellent message ✨

s.c said...

Pity that you can't tell by the mural itself that we have to reduce plastic.

DawnTreader said...

Here they are trying to reduce the use of plastic bags etc as well. Some shops still have them, but then you have to pay extra for them. At my supermarket they've even switched to recycled paper bags for fruit and vegetables now. (Some things still come pre-packed in plastic, though.)

Sami said...

Great mural and great message too of course. We have the same ban in Australia, but there's still a lot of plastic around, specially vegetables and fruits wrapped in containers.
Thanks for participating Amy.

carol l mckenna said...

Wonderful and beautiful mural with a great message ~ here in New England plastic bags are banned or they have recycled ones ~ We do need to take better care of Mother Earth ~ it is our planet ~

Live each moment with love,

A ShutterBug Explores,
aka (A Creative Harbor))

Bill said...

Plastic is a world problem and the world doesn't seem to be on the same page. You can only do what you can do and be an example to others.

Tigger's Mum said...

Recently I met a German woman who has just finished a PhD on what she called environmental psychology. Yesterday she asked me to read a short summary she had to write for press release (in English) about what she had studied and the conclusions arrived at. It turned out that the subject was in fact 'climate change art' and how it impacts people's thinking and acting, and how it may be effective (or be made to be effective) in communicating climate change information and motivating behavioral change. She calls it the 'nudge' effect. I will be interested to see the whole PhD paper now. I wonder what she would make of the MOTAT art.

William Kendall said...

Quite colourful.

Yogi♪♪♪ said...

Yep, way too much plastic. Ironically, a ton of plastic is used in the carryout food that is more popular now with the pandemic. Some strides are being made to reduce the foam plastic.

Fun60 said...

More pressure needs to be put on manufacturers and supermarkets to stop wrapping fruit and veg in plastic!

Sallie (FullTime-Life) said...

I just read an article about how plastic manufacturers lied to the public saying that most plastic was recyclable, so people wouldn’t feel guilty buying stuff in it. When actually the opposite is true. Most of it isn’t. .... so yes, the right thing is use less. It’s hard though, we are trying!

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