Randy Olson, Melissa Farlow Photography

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  • Ten Hectare beach at the north tip of Baseco slum area is covered with trash including used toothpaste tubes from the Pasig River and other sources. Trash is visible on all edges of Manila Bay but this area is particularly impacted. A stream running from a fish hatchery is filtered, but flows back into Manila Bay. The bay has very little visibility–somewhat the consistency of motor oil.  <br />
<br />
A lingering memory from this trip will be that all our garbage goes SOMEWHERE and in the Philippines it goes to the most marginalized areas to be sorted, de-labelled and piled up. In this culture plastic is money, and artisanal industries are located around the dumps as well as the tourist areas where plastic trash comes out of casinos and hotels. Children push aside used toilet paper to find bits of plastic that net 5 pesos a kilo. Junk shops take it to plastic processors and make 22 pesos a kilo. It takes about 16 one liter Coke bottles to weigh one kilogram. The Philippines is the third largest contributor to ocean plastics with 500,000 tons a year.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702700.JPG
  • Plastic bottles fill the Cibeles fountain as a way of calling attention to the environmental impact of disposable plastics. Luzinterruptus is an anonymous art collective in Madrid that’s been making installation art with plastic waste all over the world. They started producing political and illegal art works and now, ironically, this installation is legit and paid for by City Hall in Madrid. The artists took plastic trash from a town and placed it in the most beautiful areas of the city, the fountains of Neptune and Cibeles in Centro so everyone would contemplate on what they are doing with one-use-plastic.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2692105.JPG
  • Plastic bottles fill the Cibeles fountain as a way of calling attention to the environmental impact of disposable plastics. Luzinterruptus is an anonymous art collective in Madrid that’s been making installation art with plastic waste all over the world. They started producing political and illegal art works and now, ironically, this installation is legit and paid for by City Hall in Madrid. They took the plastic trash from a town and placed it in the most beautiful areas of the city, the fountains of Neptune and Cibeles in Centro so everyone would contemplate on what they are doing with one-use-plastic.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2692105-1.JPG
  • A mother a child work together sorting plastic in Dhaka, Bangladesh, where most of the informal plastic waste industry work occurs along the Buriganga River.  Noorjahan teaches her child Momo how to bail plastic waste after it has been washed in the river that flows into the Bay of Bengal.  Her  job is to take the wet plastic sheeting and spread it out to dry over the landscape. It hand labor–shaking water off each piece of plastic and turning it over until it is dry enough to be baled and taken to a transfer recycling station.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2692107.JPG
  • A family removes labels from plastic bottles, sorting green from clear ones to sell to a scrap dealer. Most of the recycling is done on public river banks and landings or under bridges. The plastic that is saved for recycling in this process is better than anything that can be automated in the USA. But the overburden - the unwanted plastic trash - that comes to this riverbank, invariably ends up in the Buringanga River watershed and eventually in the ocean.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_20171128.tif
  • An underwater photo captures a piece of red plastic floating in Manila Bay. Over 500,000 tons of plastic trash wash out through this bay every year, contributing  to the 10 million metric tons of plastic seeps into the oceans annually, mostly from Asia.  The bay is one of the most polluted bodies of water in the world.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2703541.JPG
  • In Dhaka, Bangladesh, laborers sort through piles of discarded plastic bottles at a recycling center. Plastic waste and global warming are companion threats. People’s need for clean drinking water increases as temperatures rise. The size of this center is equivalent to three football fields. In the winter when I made this photograph, only one of the football fields was filled with plastic waste. In the summer when everyone drinks more bottled water because of the excessive heat in Bangladesh, all three football fields are filled with plastic waste. The slough next to this informal factory is filled with the overburden that is either shoved away or is blown by the wind into the neighboring watershed.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702769.JPG
  • Colored chips of plastic, collected, washed and sorted by hand, dry on the banks of the Buriganga River. Families wash shredded plastic for profit organizing it by color for recycling in Bangladesh’s informal plastic waste industry. Their hand labor is more accurate than highly industrialized recycling in the USA and the labor costs $2-$4 a day.  Blue bottle caps are sorted from red bottle caps and they are sorted from the green bottle caps. A huge overburden of plastic is thrown away landing in the river and washing out into the Bay of Bengal.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2692109.JPG
  • Plastic shop in Baseco Philippines where most of the plastic recycling happens in the country.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702616-8.JPG
  • A plastic collector created a Christmas tree made from green plastic bottles.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702637.JPG
  • Colored chips of plastic, collected, washed and sorted by hand, dry on the banks of the Buriganga River in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Most of the recycling is done on public river banks and landings or under bridges. The plastic that is saved for recycling in this process is better than anything that can be automated in the USA. But the overburden - the unwanted plastic trash - that comes to this riverbank, invariably ends up in the Buringanga River watershed and eventually in the ocean.
    MM8515_20171128_28239.tif
  • After sheets of clear plastic trash have been washed in the Buriganga River, a woman spreads them out to dry to be sold to a recycler. Most of the recycling is done on public river banks and landings or under bridges. The plastic that is saved for recycling in this process is better than anything that can be automated in the USA. But the overburden - the unwanted plastic trash - that comes to this riverbank, invariably ends up in the Buringanga River watershed and eventually in the ocean.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_20171128.tif
  • These plastic flowers from China are in a street market in Mumbai. Plastic from the Dharavi slums goes to China as pellets and comes back as flowers.<br />
<br />
The Dharavi slum was founded in 1882 during the British colonial era, and grew in part because of an expulsion of factories and residents from the peninsular city centre by the colonial government, and from the migration of poor rural Indians into urban Mumbai.<br />
<br />
Dharavi has an active informal economy in which numerous household enterprises employ many of the residents.
    MM8515_20171118_17610.tif
  • Luzinterruptus, an anonymous art collective in Madrid that creates installation art with plastic waste all over the world. The point of this installation is to show folks what less than a days plastic trash looks like when it is on display in the famous fountains of Madrid.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702613.JPG
  • A family removes labels from plastic bottles, sorting green from clear ones to sell to a scrap dealer. A woman works sorting while her daughter wades through a sea of plastic under the Buriganga Bridge in Dhaka, Bangladesh. They are part of informal plastic waste industry and set up their operation working long hours to eke out of living looking for recyclable materials.  It may appear a chaotic, tangled heap but the workers make order finding like colors and types in the waste that is in the shadows of Burigonga Bridge Road that goes over a backwater to the Buriganga River.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2692108.JPG
  • Luzinterruptus, an anonymous art collective in Madrid that creates installation art with plastic waste all over the world.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702607.jpg
  • Plastic trash in Freedom Island's ecotourism area.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2703572.jpg
  • Plastic trash in Freedom Island's ecotourism area.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2703550.JPG
  • Trucks full of plastic bottles pull into Toplun, a recycling facility in Valenzuela, Philippines. The Philippines is the third largest contributor to ocean plastics with 500,000 tons a year. Twenty-five percent of the waste of the Philippines is produced in Metro Manila.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2692106-1.JPG
  • Plastic trash in Freedom Island's ecotourism area.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2703567.JPG
  • Plastic trash in the Pasig River.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2703561.JPG
  • Plastic trash in the Pasig River.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2703555.JPG
  • Luzinterruptus, an anonymous art collective in Madrid that creates installation art with plastic waste all over the world.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2703540.JPG
  • A market in Manila that sells a large amount of plastic items.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702706.JPG
  • Luzinterruptus, an anonymous art collective in Madrid that creates installation art with plastic waste all over the world.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702615.JPG
  • Luzinterruptus, an anonymous art collective in Madrid that creates installation art with plastic waste all over the world.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702612.JPG
  • Luzinterruptus, an anonymous art collective in Madrid that creates installation art with plastic waste all over the world.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702611.JPG
  • Luzinterruptus, an anonymous art collective in Madrid that creates installation art with plastic waste all over the world.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702606.JPG
  • The hull of a Boeing 787 Dreamliner, constructed of carbon fiber–reinforced plastic and other polymer composites, is inspected before electronics are added. The aircraft is fitted with ultra light weight cabin assemblies. And this is a good use of plastic because this plane will require less fuel and actually help with jet lag because the cabin can be more fully pressurized.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2696252.JPG
  • Plastic bottles move down the conveyer belt at Poland Spring where between 345 and 425 employees working at the Hollis, Maine site oversee an array of computers and the water bottle production line. The 838,000 square-foot facility is the largest bottled water plant in the world, turning out about 80 million cases of water every year. Some of the machines fill 1,200 bottles per minute. The plant has reduced the plastic in its half-liter bottles by 62 percent since 1994.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2692111.JPG
  • A plastic surgeon marks up a patient for his incisions for cosmetic surgery while nurses watch.
    RANDY OLSON_04319_2512746.JPG
  • Plastic trash in Freedom Island's ecotourism area just outside Manila, Philippines.
    MM8515_20171108_10178.tif
  • Luzinterruptus, an anonymous art collective in Madrid that creates installation art with plastic waste all over the world.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2703539.JPG
  • Luzinterruptus, an anonymous art collective in Madrid that creates installation art with plastic waste all over the world.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702610.JPG
  • Luzinterruptus, an anonymous art collective in Madrid that creates installation art with plastic waste all over the world.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702608.JPG
  • A trash picker in a plastic laminated casket.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702717-2.JPG
  • Men transport plastic trash for recycling.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702799.jpg
  • Plastic sorting, shredding, melting, and product production in Mumbai's Dharavi slum.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702727.jpg
  • Plastic bottle caps are shredded at a recycling facility in Valenzuela, Philippines.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702688.jpg
  • Woman is wrapped in plastic after getting electric stimulation "medical" treatment to lose weight "passively."
    RANDY OLSON_MM7593_1260983-7.TIF
  • A worker hangs on as trucks full of plastic bottles pull into Toplun, a recycling facility in Valenzuela, Philippines. The Philippines is the third largest contributor to ocean plastics with 500,000 tons a year. Twenty-five percent of the waste of the Philippines is produced in Metro Manila.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2692106.JPG
  • A trash picker's husband is comforted by a priest with his wife in a plastic laminated casket.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702717-1.JPG
  • A girl removes labels from plastic bottles, sorting green from clear ones to sell to a scrap dealer.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702796.jpg
  • After sheets of clear plastic trash have been washed in the Buriganga River, women spread them out to dry to be sold to a recycler.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702793.jpg
  • A plastic company that makes household items with older injection molding equipment.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702709.jpg
  • It's party time on a hot summer day. River tanking in plastic livestock-watering containers is a popular tourist draw along the shallow Calamus River in central Nebraska. With two-thirds of the Ogallala’s water underlying it, the state’s wealth of groundwater feeds countless springs, streams, and rivers.<br />
<br />
There is so much fossil water available in NE that a couple of cowboys figured out how to float the river in cow tanks. Now ranchers use tourism to supplement ranch income in hard times and as many as 350 tourists float the river on one day. The Calamus is spring fed from the Ogallala aquifer.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8429_2481070-9.TIF
  • In Bangladesh, plastic balloons are manufactured by hand in this factory.
    MM8515_20171129_29034.tif
  • A bottled water plant in Hollis, Maine, has reduced the plastic in its half-liter bottles by 62 percent since 1994.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2703535.JPG
  • The hull of a Boeing 787 Dreamliner, constructed of carbon fiber–reinforced plastic and other composites, before electronics are assembled.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2703530.JPG
  • The hull of a Boeing 787 Dreamliner, constructed of carbon fiber–reinforced plastic and other composites, which makes it lighter and more fuel efficient than aluminum airframes.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2703528.JPG
  • A woman, who leads a zero waste lifestyle, recycles up plastic trash.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702857.JPG
  • Plastic bottles collected from a recycling plant in San Francisco, California.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702847.JPG
  • Plastic recycling.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702831.JPG
  • Plastic pinwheels and balloons for sale.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702825.JPG
  • Plastic pinwheels and balloons for sale.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702823.JPG
  • After sheets of clear plastic trash have been washed in the Buriganga River, they are spread out to dry to be sold to a recycler.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702813.JPG
  • A family removes labels from plastic bottles, sorting green from clear ones to sell to a scrap dealer.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702798.JPG
  • Bundles of plastic for recycling.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702789.JPG
  • In Dhaka, Bangladesh, laborers sort through a huge pile of discarded plastic bottles.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702767.JPG
  • Plastic sorting and sales in Mumbai, India.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702741.JPG
  • Plastic items for sale in Mumbai, India.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702739.JPG
  • Plastic sorting in Mumbai's Dharavi slum.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702730.JPG
  • Plastic sorting, shredding, melting, and product production in Mumbai's Dharavi slum.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702726.JPG
  • Plastic sorting in the Philippines.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702724.JPG
  • Plastic sorting in the Philippines.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702723.JPG
  • A plastic company that makes household items with older injection molding equipment.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702710.JPG
  • A plastic company that makes household items with older injection molding equipment.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702709.JPG
  • Plastic bottles fill a recycling facility in Valenzuela, Philippines.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702693.JPG
  • Plastic bottles are shredded at a recycling facility in Valenzuela, Philippines.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702682.JPG
  • Plastic bottles are sorted at a recycling facility in Valenzuela, Philippines.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702679.JPG
  • Woman wrapped in plastic after getting electric stimulation treatment for weight loss.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7593_1260939.TIF
  • Plastic store in the Caucasus Mountains.
    RANDY OLSON_MM6689_691829.TIF
  • Colored chips of plastic, collected, washed and sorted by hand, dry on the banks of the Buriganga River.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702780.jpg
  • Plastic sorting in the Philippines.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2731207.JPG
  • A bottled water plant in Hollis, Maine, has reduced the plastic in its half-liter bottles by 62 percent since 1994.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2703534.JPG
  • The hull of a Boeing 787 Dreamliner, constructed of carbon fiber–reinforced plastic and other composites, before electronics are assembled.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2703531.JPG
  • The hull of a Boeing 787 Dreamliner, constructed of carbon fiber–reinforced plastic and other composites, which makes it lighter and more fuel efficient than aluminum airframes.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2703529.JPG
  • A billboard encouraging people to use recycled glass bottles to carry their liquids instead of using plastic packaging.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2703502.JPG
  • A woman, who leads a zero waste lifestyle, recycles up plastic trash.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702856.JPG
  • Plastic statues collected from a recycling plant in San Francisco, California.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702849.JPG
  • Plastic statues collected from a recycling plant in San Francisco, California.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702848.JPG
  • A conveyor belt carries mixed plastic to an optical sorter.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702846.JPG
  • Plastic balloons are manufactured.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702833.JPG
  • Plastic balloons are manufactured.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702832.JPG
  • A woman packages plastic toy cars.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702829.JPG
  • A man and woman package plastic toys.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702828.JPG
  • A woman packages plastic toy cars.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702827.JPG
  • A wagon of soft drinks in plastic bottles and packaging.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702826.JPG
  • Plastic recycling in Bangladesh.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702822.JPG
  • Plastic recycling in Bangladesh.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702821.JPG
  • Plastic recycling in Bangladesh.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702819.JPG
  • Plastic recycling in Bangladesh.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702815.JPG
  • Plastic recycling in Bangladesh.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702814.JPG
  • After sheets of clear plastic trash have been washed in the Buriganga River, a man spreads them out to dry to be sold to a recycler.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702812.JPG
  • After sheets of clear plastic trash have been washed in the Buriganga River, a man spreads them out to dry to be sold to a recycler.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702811.JPG
  • Pink plastic pellets are manufactured into flip flops.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702810.JPG
  • Pink and green plastic pellets are manufactured into flip flops.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702809.JPG
  • Sheets of clear plastic trash are washed in the Buriganga River.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702804.JPG
  • A woman sorts through trash for plastic recycling.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702797.JPG
  • After sheets of clear plastic trash have been washed in the Buriganga River, a woman spreads them out to dry to be sold to a recycler.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702795.JPG
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