"The
Washed Ashore Project is a non-profit, community-based organization with a mission of educating and creating awareness about marine debris and plastic pollution through art. Washed Ashore is a project of The Artula Insitute for Arts & Environmental Education, whose mission is to provide opportunities to express and teach environmental issues through the arts.
Under the leadership of
Angela Haseltine Pozzi, community members of all ages work together to clean up out beaches and process the debris into art supplies to construct giant sculptures of the sea life most affected by plastic pollution. This has resulted in thousands of pounds of debris removed from local beaches and turned into works of art. These unique art pieces are part of a traveling exhibition that includes educational signage and programs that encourage reducing, refusing and reusing, repurposing and recycling.
As lead artist, Angela Haseltine Pozzi orchestrates the construction of these towering, aesthetically striking sculptures of marine life with the assistance of many volunteers and a dedicated staff. Angela has been an exhibiting artist and educator for more than 30 years and now chooses to use at as a powerful tool to encourage community and environmental action about her true passing...cleaning up the world's oceans.
90% of the debris we collect is petroleum-based: plastic items, nylon ropes and net. We are able to use 98% of this trash to create sculptures, including a walk-through replica of an ocean gyre, a Styrofoam coral reef, Henry the fish, a plastic bottle sea jelly, an oil-spill replica , and a musical sea star (tuned to an e-flat scale!). An interdisciplinary environmental arts curriculum and feature-lengeth documentary are in progress to accompany this work."
Since
Washed Ashore's launch in 2010:
- 12,000+ volunteers participated
- 10,000+ school students involved
- Over 65 sculptures have been built
- Over 17 tons of debris processed
- 300+ miles of coastline beach debris used
- Over 15 million people will see their exhibits
- 95% of debris is petroleum-based
- They're still using 98% of debris collected
FIND OUT MORE ABOUT WASHED ASHORE - click here
DID YOU KNOW?
About 300 million lbs of plastic is produced each year globally - less than 10% of this is recycled!
The most common things to be found in the sea are:
Single-use plastic bags
Toothbrushes
Fishing equipment
Single-use water bottles
Toys
Knowing all this and having projects like Washed Ashore out there, for everyone to learn from and be involved in, how can we sit here and tell ourselves that we will not make a difference? How can we continue with our lives knowing that we are destroying our planet? And why is it okay for us to cast huge issue aside and dismiss it as an over exaggeration?
It is estimated that by 2050 there will be more plastic in the ocean than fish. And we are going to let this happen?
This is not acceptable.
This is not okay.
This must be changed.
Refuse single-use plastic. Reuse as much as you possibly can. Recycle everything you can think of and in any way you can imagine.
Help your planet. Protect your world.
