Over the Summer I have been busy working on making individual ‘Green Pledges’ to illustrate some of the environmental commitments visitors to Northumberlandia in June and July have made by making small lifestyle changes.
‘We pledge to try and reduce the amount of plastic waste we are using’, Green Pledge.
In a couple of weeks, all of the ‘Green Pledges’ made by local school children, young visitors to Northumberlandia made onsite and those I have made to reflect visitors environmental commitments, will go on display within the woodlands at Northumberlandia.
Here are some photos of a few of the finished pieces, with brief information about the environmental commitment that inspired the piece.
‘Reduce plastic waste’ Green Pledge.
The ‘Green Pledge’ above, illustrates some quite shocking statistics:
- Over the last 65 years, more than 8.3 billion metric tons of plastic has been produced.
- Plastic can take over 500 years to fully decompose.
- But only 9% of that plastic has been recycled (12% incinerated, the rest landfill/litter).
‘To use no more plastic folks’, Green Pledge.
‘To recycle more plastic items’, Green Pledge.
‘Planting bee bombs in our garden’, Green Pledge.
‘No more nappy bags’, Green Pledge.
The above piece reminds us that over 3796 disposable nappies are used by babies up to the age of 2 1/2 years old. I tried visualising that – not a nice vision, and all that to go to landfill. The materials used in disposable nappies are extremely slow to decompose. Many children will use more…
‘To follow a Vegan diet to help save the planet’, Green Pledge.
I admire all the people who have been involved with this project and set themselves a challenge to improve things for the their local environment and, often, themselves. There are many statistics about the positive benefit to the planet if more people have days where they follow a vegetarian/vegan diet instead of meat – a big reduction in carbon dioxide reduction would be one benefit and the use of land purely for food production would be another, to just name a couple of things.
‘Planting flowers in our garden for the bees’, Green Pledge.
One thing I must highlight is that the majority of all the pieces of work made for the residency and the Green Pledges, are either made from recycled, vintage materials or from ‘found’ objects, which I have then further worked on – some in great detail. A great deal of my work is made this way. I collect vintage fabric from markets and charity shops, often I am given textiles that are still lovely but are of no use to the owner. I also ‘find’ things on my walks and recently, I have been bringing home plastic bottles etc that I have found littered whilst walking the dog in the park.
One piece I have made for this residency is made from just ‘found’ pieces like bottles from the park, cardboard dumped in our back lane, recycled wood and yogurt pots our council will not recycle. This piece is my ‘Gull’ which you can see below – I hope you like him!
‘To do a litter pick every time we go to the beach’, Green Pledge.
Louise Underwood @OBSESIVCREATIV 