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The Plastic Menace through a Child’s Eyes
Happy toys stranded on the sand tell a sad story of our wasteful ways
As a kid growing up in California’s arid Central Valley, I considered a trip to the beach a near-religious experience. Armed with a bucket full of plastic shovels and molds, I spent hours building sand castles and fashioning an army of sea creatures. The tradition continues today at beaches around the world. Ecstatic children dash about, sand in their shorts and smiles on their faces. Yet the plastic that makes the joy possible is no longer a tool of innocents. When washed out to sea at high tide, it becomes a weapon. The ocean chokes on it. The land is covered in microscopic particles that find their way into our water and food. And we are to blame.
For the last year, I have collected plastic toys left behind on San Francisco’s Ocean Beach and the central California coast’s Pismo Beach. They still make me smile. But it is an ironic response. To capture that combination of delight and doom, I have photographed some of these found objects over simple printouts of ocean and beach scenes on my telephone. The double artificiality is intentional. One day our memory of a living ocean might be all we have left.
