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Modern art is (made from) rubbish

The Rainbow Worrier, made from 5,000 plastic bags It's been an arty week for me. After the polar bear sculptures in the US, an outdoor art group in Devon - Trail Recycled Art in Landscape (Trail) - has made a trawler boat out of 5,000 plastic bags and named it Rainbow Worrier after our legendary ship the Rainbow Warrior. They even filled it up with plastic fish in fishing nets to highlight how plastic is destroying marine ecosystems.

Plastic waste isn't just what you see on beaches and coast lines. A plastic dump in the Pacific Ocean as large as Texas is constantly swirling in a massive gyre that is referred to as the 'trash vortex'. Other unflattering names include Asian trash trail and the Eastern Garbage Patch where six kilos of plastic swirls for every kilo of plankton.

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Dead seas: human activities are killing off the oceans

AAAS map of impacts on the N Sea

It's official; mankind is killing off our oceans far faster than previously thought. The first global-scale study of human impacts on marine ecosystems, published today in the flagship US journal Science, reveals a picture of widespread destruction with few if any areas remaining untouched.

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The vinyl solution

web_banner_255_176.jpgNow this is fun. Top-notch design studio Freerange Graphics have produced another of their really quite cool online animations, and anyone who's seen cyberpunk animal welfare skit The Meatrix or organic sci-fi rip-off Grocery Store Wars will know they can put a groovy spin on ethically-minded issues. But for their latest viral masterpiece they've shifted away from foodstuffs and onto toxic chemicals in the form Sam Suds and the Case of the Poison Plastic, a pop at toxic PVC that has more than a touch of The Big Sleep about it.

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