Toxic Legacies / Filtering the Truth
The concept of recycling has gained immense popularity as a sustainable approach to waste pollution and is embraced as a potential solution to our escalating environmental crisis. However, not all recycling practices – especially when it comes to plastic – are necessarily environmentally friendly. In many cases, claims to recyclability are merely greenwashing, a marketing strategy used by companies to position themselves as environ- mentally conscious without implementing actual changes in their production practices. My master project aims to investigate the greenwashing behind recycling and how the concept of recycling can tend to justify the production of waste in a consumer-based system.
The concept of recycling has gained immense popularity as a sustainable approach to waste pollution and is embraced as a potential solution to our escalating environmental crisis. However, not all recycling practices – especially when it comes to plastic – are necessarily environmentally friendly. In many cases, claims to recyclability are merely greenwashing, a marketing strategy used by companies to position themselves as environ- mentally conscious without implementing actual changes in their production practices.
My master project aims to investigate the greenwashing behind recycling and how the concept of recycling can tend to justify the production of waste in a consumer-based system.
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painting all of our anthropocentric landscapes in specs
of brown and orange. According to the National Geographic,
a rough 6.5 trillion cigarette butts were littered
worldwide in the year 2019, 2 with no radical decline in
the years to follow. The material itself can take up to ten
years to degrade, yet chemicals such as arsenic, lead
and nicotine that are released into the environment long
outlast the life of a butt itself and posing a harmful threat
to our environment and that of our natural relatives. 3
“
The image or illusion of filtration is essential
to the selling of cigarettes, whereas the fact
of filtration is not.
”
Internal memo, Philip Morris, 1963
95% of cigarette filters, also known as filter tip, are
made from cellulose acetate fibres. First introduced in
the 1950s, and as a reaction to the emerging fears of
lung cancer, they intend to reduce harms of smoking
by absorbing vapours and filtering particulate accumulation.
Being categorised as a non-toxic, odourless,
tasteless and weakly flammable plastic, the acetate is
used by being spun into tow fibres that are thinner than
sewing thread, and packed tightly together – create
an illusion of a cotton-like material.
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