Marine Waste Art Exhibition: The sea embraces all rivers? The sea is not willing to accept marine litter

We often say that the sea accepts all rivers, but if we could hear what the sea has to say, perhaps it would say: I do not want this! Everything the rivers bring is garbage!

Starting in December, the "From Land to Sea" - Marine Debris Art Special Exhibition on display at Kaohsiung Metropolitan Park, curated by Chinese-American environmental artist La Benida Hui (Ms. Hsu Chin-wen) from New York, USA, uses many discarded items picked up from beaches to create large-scale works, aiming to convey the concept that "80% of marine debris comes from land" and, through the artworks, to tell people that much of this discarded trash still has value in use.

Hsu Chin-wen spoke of a voyage she took, a journey from Bermuda to Iceland, during which she saw a great deal of plastic waste and abandoned fishing nets, and then discovered that this plastic gradually breaks down into tiny plastic particles, which enter small marine organisms through filter feeding, are then preyed upon and enter large marine animals, and finally may end up in people's food. This is the journey of plastic: humans made it, discarded it, and in the end it still comes back to humans.

To help the public understand where these plastic particles come from, the Taiwan Watch Institute provides many personal care products, facial cleansers, cleansers and so on containing plastic particles at the exhibition venue, so that everyone can understand through microscopic images which products contain plastic particles. In the past, facial cleansers used plant starch and grain powder as exfoliating particles; after 1990, in order to reduce costs, manufacturers began using plastic particles to replace natural starch, and these particles, imperceptibly, flow through sink drains, through pipes into sewage tanks, float in the water, and enter sewage treatment plants. If the water purification function of the sewage treatment plant cannot filter out these plastic microbeads, then these plastic microbeads will drift everywhere with the drainage system, enter rivers, and flow to the ocean.