Plastiche Gardens – Earth day 2021

To mark Earth day 2021 and in the midst of the ongoing pandemic, please enjoy some images from 2019’s Nuit Blanche Toronto installation “Plastiche Gardens”, which was featured as part of the One Path artist collective at the Spadina Museum grounds. Stay tuned on further updates for Nuit Blanche resuming in 2022, which will be back bigger and better than ever at the Spadina Museum.

Artist Statement

Single-use plastic products are seeping into every facet of the natural world: our water, the soil, in animals and plant life. This whimsically disturbing wonderland ominously imagines a future where the line between the natural and the artificial has been erased.

Most sources indicate that less than 10% of all plastic products created worldwide are ever recycled; roughly one-million plastic bottles are purchased every minute.  That amounts to 470 billion bottles ending up in landfills, waterways and who knows where else each year.  Sourced and created from post-consumer plastic bottles, Plastiche Gardens represents the ramification of our single-use plastics addiction and the irreparable impact on the environment.  Remaining on our current trajectory, the “Midas touch” of a once-thought miracle material is fast becoming our physical reality, from plant roots to our intestines. 

When we choose an action, we determine the outcome, and convenience has consequences.  If you can’t re-use it, refuse it.  Be part of the solution, not part of the pollution.

Here are 10 reasons to refuse single-use plastics:

1.   Made from fossil fuels
2.   Huge carbon footprint to produce
3. At current rates, ocean plastics will surpass total mass of fish by 2050
4. Takes 450 – 1,000 years to break down and even then, micro-plastics will never biodegrade in the environment
5.   Only 10-12% of plastic products are recycled in Canada
6.   Causes hormone disruption & cancers
7.   Pollutes our oceans and waterways
8.   Kills or injures marine animals and birds
9. Enters our food chain – we consume 50,000 plastic particles per year
10.   Leaches toxins into food and drink