MILLERTON — On Tuesday, April 4, following an intense two days of hands-on research, some students from Indian Mountain School (IMS) in Salisbury, Connecticut, and about 55 parents and community members watched the film “Junk” at the Moviehouse in awe and some dismay. The question-and-answer session that followed revealed the depth and scope of the problems surrounding plastics waste—no longer confined to the ocean, if ever it was—as well as the need for each of us to step up and make changes at many levels.
The 2009 documentary short follows Marcus Eriksen, fellow sailor and marine scientist Joel Paschal, and unseen director/cinematographer Chris Jones, in a harrowing 2,600-mile voyage from California to Hawaii on a raft made of 15,000 water bottles lashed together with disused fishing nets and other plastic detritus, and topped with an old Cessna aircraft as a cabin.
Its name, “Junk,” cleverly refers to both its structure and its mission. The just-under-30 minute film, available for free on Vimeo, is an exhilarating and sobering watch. The background, updates and calls to action at this community event rounded out the presentation and the urgency of 5 Gyres and other organizations worldwide.
Scientists and adventurers
Tom Stewart, IMS’ director of sustainability, introduced Eriksen and Anna Cummins, a married couple who, in 2009, founded 5 Gyres, a non-governmental organization dedicated to ongoing research on ocean plastics and solutions to the growing problems associated with them. He hailed its years of hard work, groundbreaking research and positivism in sometimes extreme conditions, soon to be amply illustrated in the film.
Stewart acknowledged IMS parents Sabra Clark and Andy Blumenthal for making the 5 Gyres visit possible, including the “scholar science” conducted at the school on April 3 and 4 and the evening at the Moviehouse. In the lobby, teen students sold bags of compost from IMS food waste, generated by machines also available for sale for home use.
Passing around a bottle of seawater clouded with plastic particles of various sizes, Eriksen provided some background. “The trip in the film was in 2008 and preceded the creation of 5 Gyres; we know so much more now about the global reach and the upstream origins of the problem,” among those: connections to war, our addiction to fossil fuels, and a certain intractability in our institutions, industries and politicians.
Eriksen served as a Marine in Iraq in 1991 and Cummins is an environmental scientist who has taken part in multiple expeditions to the major sites of plastics waste at sea and on land; both have documentation to back up their assertions.
When you throw it away, where is ‘away’?
In a peer-reviewed article published in early March, the current estimate of micro- and nanoplastics afloat in oceans is 170 trillion particles. So the five gyres in the world’s oceans—clockwise whirlpools of plastic waste—are no longer “trash islands”; it’s a case of plastic smog, said Eriksen. Wherever manta trawls (fine-mesh filters roughly shaped like manta rays) are submerged near the surface as seen in the film, thousands of particles of plastics are the main catch. Those particles, covered in toxins and bacteria, are consumed by fish, and the fish are consumed by humans.
But micro- (.5 mm or smaller) and nanoplastics (100 nanometers or less) are not only in oceans (and for the most part, they do not originate in the world’s bodies of water), but rather in our “throw-away society” on land, and our lack of foresight as to the “final home” of the long-lasting, basically indestructible plastics we are accustomed to. “When you throw something away, where is ‘away’?”
In a last memorable demonstration before the screening, Eriksen held up a camel bolus from Dubai, about the size of a sit-on exercise ball, cut in two. With many varied meanings, “bolus” here is a round mass found in the stomach of a camel; instead of food, it contains 2,000 plastic bags jammed in layers. The oil-rich Middle East has been using single-use plastic bags at least as long as in the U.S.; as with sea creatures and birds, herbivorous camels often view colorful, subtly moving objects to be food.
Negative externalities
The film’s epigraph is a quote from Cervantes: “So it isn’t the masses who are to blame for demanding rubbish, but rather those who aren’t capable of providing them with anything else.”
The phrase “negative externalities”—defined as “harm to a third party caused by doing business”—is repeated at several points in the film. Together with the epigraph, and proof that “evidence of US is everywhere”—statistics about the millions of microfibers our synthetic clothing sheds in washing machines, or simply as we move through our lives, to cite one example—the film propels thoughtful questioning. The first question from the audience was, “Apart from not using single-use plastics, what can we do?”
It starts with us
Eriksen admitted that the problem is significant, but pointed to historical examples of how public outcry has led to action and to marked improvements. He cited the addressing of the hole in the ozone layer by mandated decreases in the use of CFCs now becoming a problem again), and pointed to the Microbead-Free Waters Act during the Obama administration, and changes made to maritime laws after several beaches were ruined by tarry oil spills.
Cummins added that the question is a great one. “It takes steps, but it’s the best way to achieve changes,” she said, and went on to explain, “Bills work at state levels only if municipalities are first” to enact them, so to insist on local initiatives is the way to go. “We have a lot more power than we think,” she reminded the audience.
To the question of what to do about plastics already existing in our environment, Ericksen suggested using the glut to arouse public awareness. “You can give it a second life where possible, but ultimately, plastics will go to landfills,” and from there to rivers, oceans, the air and our bodies. Ideally, “We’d sequester it someplace safe while we figure out solutions.”
To the question, “Internationally, what are the differences between the five gyres?”, the couple offered that, in the North Pacific, the plastics are mostly fishing gear; the North Atlantic is the bottle-cap gyre; in the southern hemisphere, there is less; yet, Cummins said, “every gyre is remarkably similar.”
Can we recycle our way out of this?
Recycling numbers can be discouraging. While paper, glass and metals generally find dependable markets for recycled materials, plastics have lagged behind, with rates of around 8%—and that mostly for No. 1 and No. 2 plastics—for several years now. More and more plastics are being produced yearly, and the industry shows no signs of slowing on its own, with a nearly 4% projected growth rate by 2030.
Why, someone asked, is such a small percentage of plastics recycled? Eriksen responded that “companies talk about ‘recyclable’ but not how, or it’s just not feasible economically.” Since it’s cheaper for manufacturers to use “virgin plastics” made from new petrochemicals, they don’t use recycled, he said.
When measures or laws are put forth, he said, “companies resist tooth and nail; but if big companies do it, small companies will follow.” He noted that in Germany and now in Chile, as well, new laws dictate that “if you make the bottle, you must recycle the bottle,” taking the onus off the consumer to assure an eco-friendly afterlife to packaging and other plastics. New York state is currently debating similar extended producer responsibility laws.
One audience member asked how Cummins and Eriksen maintain hope. “Definitely, given the extent of problem, it is easy to spiral into overwhelm,” Cummins said, “but we’re still hopeful. There is a groundswell in every country, and lots of innovation.”
“The reuse economy will be big, and holds a lot of promise,” Eriksen added, along with a cautionary note. The changes mentioned before were made when people became aware and insisted on action by governments; but plastics are a bigger and more complex problem.
Concluding with measured optimism, Cummins spoke admiringly of the young people she and 5 Gyres have worked with. “I’m amazed at how much this next generation knows.” Eriksen, noting that thoughtful design and planning of systems is needed, added, “But it will take all of us demanding better stuff; that’s what makes change happen.”
“Junk” is available to watch online at vimeo.com/266598842 and www.junkraft.org/ holds more information about the project.
Indian Mountain School parent Amber De Gramont with IMS sustainability director Tom Stewart, with the ‘instant compost’ home model at the Moviehouse in Millerton on April 4. Photo by Deborah Maier
In a presentation to Indian Mountain School students on April 3, Marcus Eriksen of 5 Gyres holds up the two halves of a bolus made up of plastic bags found in a camel’s stomach. Photo by Sam Decock
Laurie Fendrich and Peter Plagens at home in front of one of Plagens’s paintings.
“He was doing critiques with everyone,” Fendrich said of Plagens. “We met at one of those sessions and, well, what can I say. We fell in love instantly.”
Fendrich speaks candidly about the pressures that shaped her early life choices. “We both married the first time at 21, which a good number of women of my generation did without much thought.” Her first husband was a good guy, she says, but “we weren’t suited for each other at all, even though he suited my parents perfectly.” Her decision to get a divorce was seismic. “My mother didn’t speak to me for a year.” Time softened the rupture. “One day she told me, ‘I see now why you left.’”
Fendrich had a rigorous liberal arts education at Mount Holyoke. “I studied painting and drawing, but I also got interested in political philosophy. Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli — Rousseau was my big guy — Tocqueville, everybody. And I still read them.” Plagens’s path was less formal. “I went to USC at 17,” he said, “and declared English as my major. It was a frat school, and I was in one for the first two years. Then I started doing the cartoons for the Daily Trojan, took a couple art classes, and thought, ‘Wait a minute, I like this.’”
Culturally, they diverged just as sharply. “I came from a fairly puritanical family that didn’t even go to the movies,” Fendrich said. Plagens, by contrast, grew up immersed in pop culture. “My father was an omnivorous reader,” he said, “and a jazz fan, and he shared these passions with me.” In 1966, Plagens walked into Artforum’s LA office and said, “I want to write reviews.” He was paid five dollars per piece. “Gasoline was 23 cents a gallon, so it went a long way.”
Over time, the couple slowly fused their educations. “He taught me jazz, I taught him Mozart,” Fendrich said with a laugh. “I’ve had a movie education from him; he read Jane Austen because of me.”
Plagens and Fendrich at home in front of some of Fendrich’s paintings. Natalia Zukerman
During their early years in LA, Plagens taught at USC, and Fendrich at Art Center College of Design. In 1985, they decided “our kind of abstraction would do better in New York,” as Fendrich put it. “So, we up and moved to Tribeca with $10,000 and a toddler.”
Both artists grounded their artistic careers in teaching and writing. “Teaching, which I loved, gave me the financial stability to be an artist,” Fendrich said, reflecting on her 27 years as a professor at Hofstra. “It meant that being an artist didn’t require I make money from every show. I didn’t start writing until 1999, but though I write for publication frequently, I make hardly any money at it.”
Artistically, they guard each other’s independence. “We have unspoken rules,” Plagens said. “You don’t comment on someone’s work while they’re in the middle of creating it.” Critique comes by invitation only. “He’s not mean, just direct,” said Fendrich. Over time, their aesthetics have subtly converged. “My work has gotten cleaner from looking at his,” she said. “He’s gotten more colorful because of me.”
The two have had several two-person exhibitions. At a recent duo show at the Texas Gallery in Houston “Laurie’s paintings flew off the wall,” Plagens recalled. “Me, well, not so much.”
Plagens’s parallel career in journalism shaped their lives in tangible ways. He worked as art critic at Newsweek from 1989 until 2003 and currently contributes reviews of museum exhibitions to The Wall Street Journal. “Being at Newsweek was one of the luckiest breaks I ever had,” he said. “They paid me to see things I would gladly pay to see.”
Their creative processes mirror their personalities. “I start with a specific idea,” Fendrich said, “and then modify things as I paint.” Plagens laughed. “I start with complete mush, just blurting it out and spending the rest of the time fixing it.”
In 2019, they made what Fendrich calls “a decision of contraction.” They left the TriBeCa loft they had lived in for three decades, sold their Catskills home with its large studio, and moved full-time to a former auto repair shop in Lakeville, now a house where each has a studio, and the ground floor retains the open feel of a loft.
What sustains them in life, art and love, decades in, are endless conversations — and arguments — about art, history, exhibitions, books and movies. That exchange, ongoing and rigorous, may just be the masterpiece of their shared life.
