London Zoo unveils plastic pollution art installation
ADVERTISEMENTLondon currently uses over a billion single-use plastic water bottles every single year.
To raise awareness, an art installation showing the drastic damage humans are doing to the environment by discarding plastic bottles was unveiled at London Zoo.
UK-based artist Nick Wood's installation called the "Space of Waste" is five-metres-high and uses around 15,000 'unrecycled plastic trash' picked-up around London.
The work of art is part of the #OneLess campaign by the UK's Zoological Society of London (ZSL).
Five facts about plastic pollution
- Since 1950, there has been about 8.3 billion metric tons of plastic produced worldwide, of which only 9 percent has been recycled, according to statista.com. 79 percent of the plastics can be found in landfills or in the natural environment.
- Today less than 30% of plastic waste generated in the EU is recycled.
- Experts say that every year, 8 million tonnes of plastic end up in our oceans. According to Greenpeace it is "the equivalent of a truckload worth of plastic entering our oceans every single minute".
- Today there is an estimated more than 150 million tonnes of plastic in the ocean. By 2050, plastic in the ocean may outweigh fish, says the Zoological Society of London on its website.
- By 2050, nearly all seabirds will have plastic in their stomachs. Already, 9 out of 10 of the birds have some of the substance in their digestive tracts, according to a study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
