Jordan's plastic trash turned into art with a message

Jordan

Published: 2022-05-29 12:09

Last Updated: 2024-03-28 03:57


Jordan's plastic trash turned into art with a message
Jordan's plastic trash turned into art with a message

Jordan-based artist and activist Maria Nissan is on a mission: to rid the world of single-use plastics and to raise public awareness about the environmental scourge through eye-catching art. One of her best-known murals graces the side of a building in the capital Amman, a giant work made from over 2,000 plastic bottles, almost 1,000 shopping bags and over 150 hookah pipe hoses.

Maria Nissan said in an interview, "So we have a cost for agriculture, we have a cost for tourism, but we also have a cost for us. Because what happens after we use these single-use plastics is we have it in our hands for 5 or 10 minutes, and then we throw it away and we don’t think about it. But it goes into our landfills and it gets actually back into our ecosystem when we have our soil and we are eating the food. And now it is proven that in our human blood we have micro-plastics, and now babies are being born with micro-plastics; Cancer is rising because of micro-plastics inside of us. If we don’t make the change, it’s going to be too late for our children and our grandchildren."

"So my speciality is art, and I use art as a way to reach the masses. It doesn't require any language barrier, it doesn’t require a highly educated person to look at it to understand it. So, because my skill is art, and I am very passionate about raising awareness about the plastic waste consumption we have in Jordan and what happens, I use art as a way of confrontation, because you don’t have to have a background to see something that is larger than life and understand that this is harming us," she added.

"It’s no one's responsibility until it becomes everyone's problem. So, plastic doesn’t go in the trash, it just comes back to us in one form or another. And now it’s inside of us. So, everyone needs to chip in to make this change, because if not, it’s going to destroy our planet and it’s going to destroy the future generations," Nissan said.