By Milena Viljoen
Water, soda, milk, orange juice, energy drinks. Any and every beverage you can think of comes in a “handy” single-use plastic container these days. But did you know we use 2 million plastic bottles in the U.S. every five minutes? And that’s just the bottles.
What does 2 million bottles look like? In “Running the Numbers,” artist Chris Jordan tries to find out. Although the complete series is about more than just consumerism, many of the images are a lesson in the impact our lives have on this planet. Some of the answers he came up with were:
- 106,000 aluminum cans used in the U.S. every 30 seconds;
- 1.14 million brown paper supermarket bags used in the U.S. every hour;
- One million plastic cups are used on U.S. airline flights every six hours;
- 11,000 commercial flights in the U.S. every eight hours; and
- 426,000 cell phones retired in the U.S. every day.
To help people comprehend such large numbers, Jordan creates enormous photographic montages illustrating the statistics of our existence.
Paper Bags, 2007 (Chris Jordan)
1.14 million brown paper supermarket bags used in the U.S. every hour
Detail from Paper Bags, 2007
Although they show us the difficult reality of our consumerism, Jordan’s images are not meant to be depressing. Above all, Jordan is intent on impressing on people the need not just to take a second look at what we buy and use, but to make a conscious decision to use less. As he stated in a 2007 interview with Bill Moyers of PBS, “There is no bad consumer over there somewhere who needs to be educated. There is no public out there who needs to change. It's each one of us."
You can see more of Chris Jordan’s work at www.chrisjordan.com.
Selected prints from his “Running the Numbers” series, printed on recycled paper and with vegetable-based inks, are now available.
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