Tuesday 17 February 2009

3 lighters

I took this picture yesterday, and I'm quite pleased with the way it's turned out.


I'd prefer refillable lighters, but these are what I have for now. When you finish them, you just chuck them.
So what happens then? I do find smashed lighters regularly on the beach here. The metal tops go rusty, and the plastic bit?
Well that tends to end up in landfill, I suppose, but not all of them do. A lot of plastic ends up in the ocean, where like everything else, it gets abraded and eroded by the waves.
But it doesn't stop being plastic. Right down to the molecular level, our oceans are carrying this stuff in suspension, where it's being imbibed by the creatures at the bottom of the food chain, and from there, everything else.
Loads more info about that HERE
I got really interested in looking at google earth for places where humans have left for good. From there I ended up loking at Alan Weisman's website where he talked about places where nature is gradually reclaiming what we've left behind. Places like Pripyat, near Chernobyl, Varosha in Northern Cyprus, and the Korean demilitarised zone (crap res images in GE for that one unfortunately)
Wikipedia came up with some more too.
Also, there's people that get their kicks from exploring ruins and stuff. The 28dayslater website has photographs and accounts of urban explorers sneaking around in old hospitals and airbases - places where humankind has left nature to return. It's always there, lurking... waiting...
Anyway, the pattern is similar wherever you look. The trees grow taller. The buidlings grow smaller.

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