Screwed

A project about waste in Britain’s waterways, commissioned by Waterfront, the magazine for the Canal and River Trust. The workshops, and installation, were delivered at Wilderness Festival, Oxfordshire on August 5^th and 6^th 2016.

Every year 8 million tonnes of plastic leak into the world’s oceans. The workshops were designed to provide an experiential learning experience highlighting the problem of abundant waste and litter in the UK, especially plastics. Contributors were guided to thread a length of approximately 80 bottle lids onto fishing line, creating a length of about 1 metre. Nearly 60 people contributed, compiling nearly 60 metres of ‘beaded’ coloured lids. These were then attached to each other and floated on a swimming lake. There they floated around in amongst swimmers, ducks and foliage. After a while they were tethered to each other in a more structured grid to create a floating raft of approx. 2metre x 1.5metre. The ‘sea’ of objects was left floating on the water for a day and night. It was then returned to the Waterfront tent and installed as a display for the duration of the festival.

The resulting spectacle was a comment on the problem of waste & litter that can end up in Britain’s waterways, causing problems for wildlife, being unsightly, and a waste of a valuable resource.

Plastic & synthetic materials are the most common types of water borne debris causing problems for water mammals and birds. Much of the persistent pollution that enters watercourses originates from upriver settlements and travels on currents for thousands of miles, into oceans. Approximately 15,000 pieces of plastic litter are estimated to be floating on every square km of ocean, most of which has originated on land, in developed countries.