Whale Statue Made of 5 Tons of Plastic Shows Exactly What We’re Doing to the Oceans

Bruges, Belgium is home to a new installation that is impossible to miss. Brooklyn-based architecture and design company STUDIOKCA has put up a 38-foot-tall whale made entirely of plastic waste reclaimed from the ocean. The whale, now surfacing from one of the city’s main canals, was created using five tons of plastic collected from the Pacific Ocean – an amount which, although it would cover some 4,000 square feet, is nothing in comparison with the total of plastic debris polluting the oceans today.

The installation, called “Skyscraper (the Bruges Whale),” was created as part of the Bruges Triennial by STUDIOKCA’s co-founders Jason Klimoski and Lesley Chang, and sends a message that is now more important than ever.

“Skyscraper is a physical example of why we need to change how we use and dispose of plastic in the world today,” Chang said.

The four-story-tall whale’s makeup consists of plastic items of all kinds – from bottles to big buckets and containers. The structure of the installation is a reminder that these items eventually find their way into the environment. Many of the plastics now making up the sculpture were gathered during several beach clean-ups, carried out in collaboration with Hawaii Wildlife Fund.

“Right now there is 150 million tons of plastic swimming in the ocean, our oceans, the oceans we share,” Klimoski told TreeHugger. “Pound for pound that is more plastic waste swimming in the ocean than there is whales. So an opportunity like this to show the type of plastic and the amount of plastic that ends up in our oceans is really important.”

The installation will be up and available for viewing through September 16, 2018, during the Bruges Triennial.

Over 8.8 million tons of plastic enter the oceans every year and cases of whale deaths caused directly by plastic ingestion are only increasing. While this is daunting, we can all take action to reduce the amount of plastic that ends up in our environment by simply looking at our everyday choices.

To learn how you can be a part of the change and limit your use of disposable plastics, check out One Green Planet’s #CrushPlastic campaign.

All image source: STUDIOKCA