I am starting my last year of my BA in photography at the Royal Academy of Art in the Hague, and realized that translating concepts into images is one of my strongest assets. For a long time I did this to convey inner struggles and funny observations. But I don’t think data and statistics are too far removed from what I did previously. I’m trying to make the invisible visible, the small larger, the largesmaller.
I want to start visualizing as much data about plastics as possible through the medium of photography, in order to create information that can promote knowledge. I’m using these words (data, information, knowledge) because I was intrigued by this ‘data-visualization-visualization’ from David McCandless. Which explains how organizing data into compact visual representations, can reach people in a way that plain text, datasheets, or newspaper articles containing unimaginable numbers can’t.
Even though I have had some courses on statistics during my period studying psychology, I haven’t been provided information on where to find datasheets that I am looking for. So I thought, perhaps someone here can help me.
Right now I’m looking for data about the total amount of plastic waste, that specifies the amount that each type of plastic contributes to the total.
I’m also looking for data on what percentage of each type of plastic gets recycled.
I have also done some more research on the defining physical (mostly visual) properties of plastics, by combining many different sources that were provided here and elsewhere, and I would like to create a compact visual guide for that as well.
PS.
For v4 people. If I could be of support to the current way the team is heading with my work, let me know, I am curious to hear what your thoughts are.
a few tips to search the net :
– http://www.pptsearchengine.net (power point search engine)
– enter in google ‘plastic NEAR epa’
– to search a site, enter in google : ‘site://epa.gov plastic’
what new findings you’d like to draw from the study/presentation ? here are a few things i’ve figured so far :
– there seems to be a recent study concluding that whatever we do now, it’s too late for the oceans; evtl. i find it back
– low-scale/tech recycling can become quickly expensive; for instance the PP machines can be considered as low efficient; a full set of machines can draw up to 10Kw; see here for instance some stats about the shredder; I consider this rather a prestige activity but an educating one;
– recycling is pretty expensive also for the industry; going from virgin plastic is way cheaper
there are all the files accumulated by the forum here (select ‘documents’ and click download); evtl. someone posted something in your direction
i know the fine folks at greenpeace have lots documents; try to contact them; usually they need a week to respond; be patient
I don’t know about more detailed data, because this is not easy to collect, e.g. all the waste that cannot be sorted, won’t be identified in it’s type (otherwise it could be sorted) and therefor you cannot calculate the recycling rate by type. So I guess there is no such data in a bigger scale. Maybe there is a smaller study about that question, but I don’t know.
