Whale made with 10,000 lbs. of plastic waste emerges from canal (Video)

Plastic waste is a huge problem -- every minute, a garbage truck's worth of plastics ends up in our oceans, contaminating marine ecosystems, clogging up coastlines and very likely ending up in what becomes our food.

Striving to bring awareness to this dire problem, Brooklyn-based architecture and design firm STUDIOKCA created this 38-foot-tall whale sculpture out of 5 tons of plastic waste (covering 4,000 square feet) that was collected from the Pacific Ocean. Done as part of the Bruges Triennial, co-founders Jason Klimoski and Lesley Chang wanted to highlight how plastic might someday actually overtake marine life, as Klimoski explains:

Right now there is 150 million tons of plastic swimming in the ocean, our oceans, the oceans we share. 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 Making of Skyscraper 2018_by STUDIOKCA from STUDIOKCA on Vimeo.

Dubbed "Skyscraper," the whale is composed of blue and white plastic containers and objects of all kinds: bleach bottles, chairs, buckets, and more -- a stark reminder that virtually all the plastic created since its invention still exists in some form today.

Much of the plastic used for the sculpture was gathered from several beach clean-up operations in the Pacific, done in collaboration with Hawaii Wildlife Fund.

The material used in Skyscraper represents only a tiny amount of the plastic that's floating out there, reminding us that we need to seriously consider changing our habits, while shopping, in the bathroom, bedroom, in addition to demanding better regulations and reusing what's already out there. Skyscraper will be up through September 16, 2018 during the Bruges Triennial; to find out more, visit STUDIOKCA.

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