Waste Not, Want Not: Running the Numbers, by Chris Jordan
February 21st, 2008Chris Jordan is a photographer who explores the phenomenon of American consumerism. His ongoing series, Running the Numbers, takes a hard look at contemporary American culture through a statistical and pictographic snapshot. If the gory numbers alone fail to make the reader squirm, the images are sure to induce greater discomfort. Jordan hopes to achieve precisely this - by trying to convey something beyond the capacity of mere raw figures, which can sometimes have an unfortunate desensitizing effect for some. According to the photographer:
My only caveat about this series is that the prints must be seen in person to be experienced the way they are intended. As with any large artwork, their scale carries a vital part of their substance which is lost in these little web images. Hopefully the JPEGs displayed here might be enough to arouse your curiosity to attend an exhibition, or to arrange one if you are in a position to do so. The series is a work in progress, and new images will be posted as they are completed, so please stay tuned.
Some numerical examples (specific to the United States) behind the pictures, which must be seen to try and grasp the sheer magnitudes involved:
2,000,000 the number of plastic bottles used every five minutes, as shown here:
32,000 the number of elective breast augmentation surgeries performed monthly, in 2006
410,000 the number of disposable paper cups used every fifteen minutes
200,000 the number of Americans dying from cigarette smoking every six months
8,000,000 the number of trees harvested every month, to make paper for mail order catalogs
426,000 the number of cell phones retired every day
1,140,000 the number of brown paper supermarket bags used every hour
60,000 the number of plastic bags used every five seconds
106,000 the number of aluminum cans consumed every thirty seconds
15,000,000 the number of sheets of office paper used every five minutes
February 28th, 2008 at 12:19 am
uhm ..which ONE is your blog ( i saw a website and a blog and randomly clicked on this one)
there was this documentary i had seen a few years ago on a similiar topic - it focused on american households which did not even have basic utensils/crockery in their households since they lived completely on the disposable phenomena - so all meals were a) purchased and b) eaten on paper plates and plastic cups and the likes ( which of course was chucked away) - the kind of monies spent on that? enormous.
February 28th, 2008 at 4:26 pm
hello Cynic, this is my primary website that doubles as a blog.
It is excruciatingly painful for me to see a lot of shoppers walk out of grocery and departmental stores carrying disposable commodities. I would not be surprised to see a significantly large number of households following the norm you mentioned, albeit to some degree. The notion of Reduce, Reuse, Recycle has been relegated by some as being just Recycle (if at all), with no focus on reduction in consumption. I should perhaps write up another post, about this as the issue is quite close to my heart.