#plasticproblem

What does Repurposing mean to you?

Day 29 of 30

NatGeo extended the deadline and I really think this short story would be great in their magazine. I'd love some feedback!

The Plastic Problem (#PlanetOrPlastic) (on Wattpad) https://my.w.tt/4EhoAulXpS

Highest Ranks: #3 in geographic

This is my entry for National Geographic’s #PlanetOrPlastic contest.

4Ocean

It’s really awesome to know that a couple of surfers from Florida can make such a huge difference (and literally create a ton of jobs to help clean up billions of pounds of trash from our ocean). With an international presence growing (as the largest ocean clean-up company - Yes, Company) - I hope these dudes continue to do a lot of good (and do it well) while helping to keep this world a beautiful place to be.

Considering the recent discovery of plastic bags on the ocean floor of the Pacific (literally the deepest part of the ocean that hadn’t been explored before) - I think it’s a huge blessing to see people take action to undo the damage that has been done.

These dudes said their goal is to remove all of the trash from the ocean and once that is done they still have a job to do on land. More power to them. They deserve all of the success (along with all of the people across the world who are working to preserve the natural beauty of this world).

Photography by Julia Claveria, Joel Karammath and Claudia Espart

Senegal was for many of us the first time in Africa, and as it could not be any different, It took us by surprise. Not the heat, or the lack of Starbucks or these so-called first world commodities we are taught to expect, rather than deserve. What captivated us was the entire world apart that defined things we thought we knew, our practices; Graphic design, product design, illustration, ceramics, photography...the list goes on. Coming from the fast-paced and gentrifying metropolis like London or Barcelona, to step out and into an equally fast-paced city like Dakar was a massive shocker, where reappropriation of typography and graphics goes beyond simple plagiarism, it is a form of art in itself! Subverting quotidian and in theory, undeserving materials like rebar and transforming them into practically anything had us in awe, in particular, because aesthetically it seems so finetuned with certain brutalist-minimalist notions permeating product design in the west nowadays. The breadth of possibilities of usages for a simple jerry can surpass and even put to shame our wildest dreams of reuse and recycling of materials back home. It is not means or logistics we lack, but rather a more deeply grounded sense of autonomy and consciousness of readily available material.

However no coin has but one face, and the reality is that as much as priced goods and materials such as rebar, jerrycans or even rice sacs are reused time and time again with wit, an equal or even larger proportion of single-use plastics and disposables are discarded on the ground, the rivers and the sea.

Lack of infrastructures for tackling waste at source, transport or final destination added to a complete lack of education of the general public makes for Senegal a hard case on the war against pollution. We were lucky enough to be able to visit PROPLAST headquarters, the first Senegalese run company to tackle the plastic problem and recycle it into pellets. Truth be told, nobody was fooled by the vision that recycling plastic can be the end goal and upheld as the saving grace to get us out of this global crisis. And to be frank, Proplast does not believe that either. What they do stand for however is a series of changes that might end up speeding up the education of the Senegalese people in matters of eco-consciousness, provide steady employment or a source of a collection-reward system and the impulse of female empowerment in the workforce.

Immediately I can think of 4 or 5 stemming problematics to each of those improvements, but the truth is that I can afford to think like this because of my structural privilege as a white educated European female living in the UK. What moral compromises are we capable of consenting to provide with employment, education and the betterment of the environment? I believe this is a narrative that Senegalese people must come to terms with by themselves, and we should be an ally at any step of the way we can.