3/16/11 WSJ: Plastic Bags
A few weeks ago I went to the the Sunnyvale Materials and Recovery Transfer (SMaRT) Station to photograph the issues they’re having with plastic bags. San Francisco took the lead with banning carry out plastic bags and now nearby cities, thankfully, are making the same push. Other than plastic bags being horrible for our environment they’re also, as I learned first hand, very inefficient in the recovered materials sorting process. They fly away from trucks and garbage piles then get caught on plants, wires and fences. They also clog the large machine they use to separate materials before they reach an assembly line of workers that does the final sorting. Everyday, a team of workers has to climb in this huge separator (that looks uncannily similar to a scene in Event Horizon) and pull the hundreds of plastics bags out by hand. In addition to this, the SMaRT station, which technically no longer accepts plastic bags for recycling, has been unable to find a viable market for recycled plastic bags.
After receiving a tour of the station and crawling into the separating machine, I was somewhat horrified by the amount of plastic disposed of on a daily basis. Plastic bags aren’t just unsustainable, they’re a considerable detriment to our environment. I encourage everyone reading this to make an effort to use reusable cloth bags, it really does make a difference.
Read article in The Wall Street Journal.
See also: a short film titled Plastic Bag, that tells the story of a plastic bag’s life. Narrated by Werner Herzog.
This entry was written by , posted on March 16, 2011 at 9:37 pm, filed under Americans, Commissioned, Landscape and tagged Bay Area, Environment, The Wall Street Journal. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
3/9/11 Untitled 102
An image taken in 2007 in Flint, Michigan, at a christian teen-center in a rough part of town.
This entry was written by , posted on March 9, 2011 at 8:07 pm, filed under Americans, Commissioned and tagged Flint. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
3/3/11 Untitled 100
Came across a frame from one of my first photojournalism assignments back in 2005. I distinctly remember agitating the film too long in the darkroom and being really disappointed that I blew out the highlights.
This entry was written by , posted on March 3, 2011 at 12:46 pm, filed under Americans. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
2/24/11 Untitled 99
An old photograph from 2006 I recently rediscovered. It was taken while I was working on a project about the Yountville Veterans Home.
This entry was written by , posted on February 24, 2011 at 3:24 pm, filed under Americans, Still Life and tagged Christmas, Lonely, Yountville Veterans Home. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
2/18/11 Sacramento
This entry was written by , posted on February 18, 2011 at 12:23 pm, filed under Americans, Personal. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
1/31/11 East of Eden
This entry was written by , posted on January 31, 2011 at 2:51 pm, filed under Americans, Landscape, Leica Project, Travels and tagged Big Sur, Birds Island, Carmel, Henry Miller Library, Highway 1, Old Veterans Trail, Point Lobos. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
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