‘Wave’ of Plastic Bottles

Two Halifax entrepreneurs are covering The Wave with 2,000 plastic bottles to highlight the problem of plastic pollution in oceans.

Endorsed by The Wave’s original creator, Donna Hiebert, Tap founders Stephen Flynn and Mike Postma will be shooting a video of their street art as soon as the weather allows, hopefully Sunday.

Their project was originally slated for Saturday before rainy weather postponed it.

“I am completely in support of doing away with bottled water and the corporations that are basically exploiting the planet,” said Hiebert.

At the same time, Hiebert said, many First Nations reserves in Canada have no access to potable water supplies.

“That’s just not acceptable in my opinion,” said Hiebert.

Tap is an environmental startup aimed at weaning people off bottled water and improving access to free drinking water, helping both the environment and people’s wallets.

To this end, the company released a smartphone app earlier this year showing people where they can access free drinking water in towns and cities around the world. More than 50 such locations exist in Halifax.

Tap also sells its own reusable bottles that people can refill without wasting plastics.

The company warns that by 2050 the total weight of single-use plastics in the world’s oceans will outweigh that of fish.

“Water is the blood of the planet and we don’t seem to understand,” said Hiebert.

She said cities like Halifax have a major role to play in combating environmental degradation, saying grassroots day-to-day efforts such as Tap’s plan to promote free drinking water is a good start.

Such efforts are key to breaking the grip of corporations, which Hiebert said maintained a stranglehold on global water and food supplies to a degree unprecedented in human history.

“I feel that greed and fear are two emotions (that) all human beings experience,” said Hiebert. “Corporations have so much power today and they are essentially motivated by greed.”

The issue of reliable water supplies has been made more acute by climate change, which is expected to drive more extreme weather events both in Nova Scotia and around the world.

While Nova Scotians can expect more rainfall and floods, which can damage crop yields, large parts of the world have been subject to severe droughts that have been linked to climate change.

The most notable example is that of Syria, which underwent a major drought from 2006-11.

The drought wiped out roughly 80 per cent of Syria’s livestock, destroyed farmland and forced up to 1.5 million farmers into cities, according to former U.S. vice-president Al Gore. The resulting social tensions helped trigger a civil war in 2011.

“As human beings we are presented with pretty objective claims in regard to the state of our planet,” said Hiebert.

She first built The Wave in 1988 and still holds moral rights over the sculpture. She gave both Postma and Flynn her blessing to modify it with their one-day project.

Source: The Chronicle Herald

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Taxonomy

• Environment
• Climate Change
• Oceanographic Survey
• Plastics
• Project Execution
• Art
• Art as idea
• Environmental