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我是視覺藝術家,也是塑膠污染聯盟的發起人之一。近二十年來,我以塑膠袋為主要創作材料,將塑膠袋剪開再拼湊縫合起來,將它們變成平面或立體作品,還有雕像及藝術裝置。以我使用塑膠當作材料的經驗得知,大約八年之後,有些作品開始產生裂縫,並分解成更小的塑膠塊。我想,「太好了,塑膠跟人一樣,也有生命極限。」
等我對塑膠更瞭解之後,才知道這其實是一件壞事。塑膠裂成小塊是件壞事的原因是,那仍是無法分解的塑膠。我們發現海洋環境裡也有很多塑膠,我在過去幾年中知道了太平洋垃圾帶和垃圾漩渦,我想我第一個反應,跟許多聽到這件事的人一樣,我想,「天哪!我們應該出海去,把這些垃圾清乾淨。」所以我真的提出一個計劃,跟一艘貨櫃船、兩艘退休的拖網漁船、一座起重機、一座攪碎機及一台冷塑機出海,我打算開到垃圾漩渦那裡,引起人們對這件事的注意,並把塑膠撈起來,磨碎以後用機器冷壓成磚塊,可讓未開發地區做為建築材料使用。
我開始跟實際去過垃圾漩渦,或研究海洋塑膠垃圾問題的人談及這個計劃,談過後我才知道,這樣去海上撈起來的塑膠,跟全世界每天實際上產生的塑膠量比起來只是九牛一毛。事實上,我必須回過頭來看問題的全貌,全面的解決之道是:我們必須找出關上垃圾生產源頭的方法,我們必須停止使用這種用一次即丟的塑膠產品,這些塑膠每天以全球性的規模侵入海裡。
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以下為系統擷取之英文原文
I'm a visual artist, and I'm also one of the co-founders of the Plastic Pollution Coalition. I've been working with plastic bags, which I cut up and sew back together as my primary material for my artwork for the last 20 years. I turn them into two- and three-dimensional pieces and sculptures and installations. Upon working with the plastic, after about the first eight years, some of my work started to fissure and break down into smaller little bits of plastic. And I thought, "Great. It's ephemeral just like us."
Upon educating myself a little further about plastics, I actually realized this was a bad thing. It's a bad thing that plastic breaks down into smaller little bits, because it's always still plastic. And what we're finding is that a lot of it is in the marine environment. I then, in the last few years, learned about the Pacific garbage patch and the gyre. And my initial reaction -- and I think this is a lot of people's first reaction to learning about it -- is, "Oh my God! We've got to go out there and clean this thing up." So I actually developed a proposal to go out with a cargo ship and two decommissioned fishing trawlers, a crane, a chipping machine and a cold-molding machine. And my intention was to go out to the gyre, raise awareness about this issue, and begin to pick up the plastic, chip it into little bits and cold mold it into bricks that could potentially be used as building materials in underdeveloped communities.
I began talking with people who actually had been out to the gyre and were studying the plastic problem in the marine environment, and upon doing so, I realized actually that cleaning it up would be a very small drop in the bucket, relative to how much is being generated every day around the world, and that actually I needed to back up and look at the bigger picture. And the bigger picture is: we need to find a way to turn off the faucet. We need to cut the spigot of single-use and disposable plastics, which are entering the marine environment every day on a global scale.
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看到這種情形,我十分生氣。我擔心的不只是你能想像到的,漂浮在太平洋中央海面那些塑膠,我現在知道有11個塑膠垃圾漩渦遍佈全球五大洋,我關心的不只是這些塑膠垃圾漩渦,還有充斥在商場上的塑膠。當我去超級市場買東西,所有食物都是塑膠包裝的,所有飲料也是塑膠包裝的,甚至連健康食品商店賣的食品也是。我也擔心冰箱裡的塑膠產品,擔心從塑膠容器中滲出的塑化毒物被我們吃下和吸收。
所以我跟其它一些關心這個問題的人,一起成立了塑膠污染聯盟。我們正致力於進行多項提議,其中一些相當基本,其一為:若在海裡找到的垃圾,百分之80到90都是塑膠,為何我們不稱之為塑膠污染?還有資源回收。所有提到永續性和綠色意識的書,都是以資源回收的概念結尾,只要把廢棄物放進資源回收桶,就不需再擔心什麼,真的是這樣嗎?在美國,塑膠回收的比例不到7%,若你進一步追蹤,特別是塑膠瓶,大部分只能降級回收或是焚化,或運到中國去。塑膠瓶被降級回收,並做成次級產物;玻璃瓶回收處理後可再次成為玻璃瓶,或再次使用;但塑膠瓶卻無法再成為塑膠瓶。
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So in looking at that, I also realized that I was really angry. I wasn't just concerned about plastic that you're trying to imagine out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean -- of which I have learned there are now 11 gyres, potentially, of plastic in five major oceans in the world. It's not just that gyre of plastic that I'm concerned about, it's the gyre of plastic in the supermarket. I'd go to the supermarket, and all of my food is packaged in plastic. All of my beverages are packaged in plastic, even at the health food market. I'm also concerned about the plastic in the refrigerator, and I'm concerned about the plastic and the toxins that leach from plastic into us and into our bodies.
So I came together with a group of other people who were all looking at this issue, and we created the Plastic Pollution Coalition. We have many initiatives that we're working on, but some of them are very basic. One is: if 80 to 90 percent of what we're finding in the ocean -- of the marine debris that we're finding in the ocean -- is plastic, then why don't we call it what it is. It's plastic pollution. Recycling. Everybody kind of ends their books about being sustainable and greening with the idea of recycling. You put something in a bin, and you don't have to think about it again. What is the reality of that? In the United States, less than seven percent of our plastics are recycled. And if you really look into it, particularly when it comes to plastic bottles, most of it is only downcycled, or incinerated, or shipped to China. It is downcycled and turned into lesser things, while a glass bottle can be a glass bottle again, or can be used again, a plastic bottle can never be a plastic bottle again.
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這對我們來說是個嚴重的問題。我們現在所關注、並要求大家去想想的另一個問題是,在原本的3R(減量、再利用、回收)前面再加上第四個R,即拒絕。只要可以,盡量拒絕使用用過即丟的塑膠產品,替代方案是有的,有些是非常舊式的做法,我目前正在收集這些很棒的耐熱玻璃容器,代替塑膠保鮮袋、保鮮盒來存放食物。我知道這麼做對我和我家人都好。如果你出門時忘記帶不銹鋼水瓶,找個不銹鋼瓶、玻璃瓶也不是難事,用它來裝水或裝過濾水,而不要購買塑膠瓶裝水。
我想在這裡對大家說的是,我知道大家對這方面的議題懂得很多,就是漂浮在海上的塑膠是個嚴重的問題,但這是身為消費者的我們所製造,也是我們可以解決的問題。我們可以藉著喚起大家對此的意識,並教育大家使用替代品來解決問題。所以,盡可能使用替代品,代替用過即丟的塑膠產品,我們可以根除-根除塑膠垃圾流入海洋的問題,並藉由這個行動拯救海洋、拯救地球、拯救我們自己。
謝謝
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So this is a big issue for us. Another thing that we're looking at and asking people to think about is we've added a fourth R onto the front of the Reduce, Reuse, Recycle three R's, and that is refuse. Whenever possible, refuse single-use and disposable plastics. Alternatives exist. Some of them are very old-school. I myself am now collecting these cool Pyrex containers and using those instead of Glad and Tupperware containers to store food in. And I know that I am doing a service to myself and my family. It's very easy to pick up a stainless-steel bottle, or a glass bottle, if you're traveling and you've forgotten to bring your stainless-steel bottle and fill that up with water, or filtered water, versus purchasing plastic bottled water.
I guess what I want to say to everybody here -- and I know that you guys know a lot about this issue -- is that this is a huge problem in the oceans, but this is a problem that we've created as consumers and we can solve. We can solve this by raising awareness of the issue and teaching people to choose alternatives. So whenever possible, to choose alternatives to single-use plastics. We can cut the stem -- tide the stem of this into our oceans, and in doing so, save our oceans, save our planet, save ourselves.
Thank you.