The invisible side of plastic is a short film about microplastic pollution in the environment. The project reveals current problems and invites to speculate about possible future outcomes.
We can't imagine a day without plastic and it's products. Because it's so easy and cheap to manufacture, plastic production is increasing every year. Meanwhile, discarded plastic takes hundreds of years to decompose and often doesn't even reach the landfills or recycling sites. Since the ocean is downstream from nearly every terrestrial location, it is the receiving body for much of the plastic waste generated on land. Sunlight and seawater embrittle plastic, and the eventual breakdown of larger objects into microplastics makes plastic available to zooplankton and other small marine animals. Once consumed by plankton, plastic particles are passed through the food chain to small fish and eventually to humans.
Plastic is becoming a part of ecosystems and the boundaries of the natural and the synthetic start to blur. While some bacterial species have evolved to consume plastic, humans cannot expect that this problem will solve itself.
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Explorations
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References
Created as the final BA project at Vilnius Academy of Arts in collaboration with Plastic Justice
