Greenpeace

'A staggering 80% of the world's original ancient forests have been destroyed or degraded. Today, many countries have lost their entire forest cover. Much of what remains is under threat from illegal and destructive logging'

'Every 2 seconds, an area of ancient forest the size of a football pitch is destroyed.'

The above 2 quotes are taken from a Greenpeace guide called 'The Paper Trail' produced to aid and inform the publishing industry of its impact on the environment. This publication was produced 3 years ago. I wonder how many millions of hectares of ancient forest have disappeared since then? The decisions taken by producers of books and newspapers are still so enormously important to our environment.

I gathered some new perspective on Project Freesheet today from a meeting I had with Belinda Fletcher @ Greenpeace. To talk to someone who is dealing with large organisations on a daily basis and trying to persuade them that they need to take more responsibility for the sourcing of the raw materials that produce their publications, gave me a glimpse of the scale of the challenges which are being faced by campaigners. Quite daunting if you ask me.

Have a look at this if you are interested - http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/forests/flashmap.cfm

5-4-3-2-1

projectfreesheet.com is go!!

well, at least I've got some blurb up and am ready to start recruiting you lovely people. But I guess first of all I need to start by explaining myself and what I'm up to. I was reading an article in The Ecologist magazine written by Jon Hughes recently and it inspired me to start an art project which marries up my main interests - the environment and photography.

When I read the article it struck me as a very good example of contrasting approaches to life in the 21st Century. On the one hand you have 'big industry' being faced with increasing competition, tighter operating budgets, and more aggressive marketing techniques than ever; on the other hand there are the concerns of the people who see more waste and irresponsible consumption than ever before.

So, i thought, here is an art project that could serve as a raising-awareness-about-an-issue initiative. I would go round all the tube lines and stations, recycling centers, waste sub-contractors and the like and take photos that would end up as a collage and eventually an exhibition. But thats a tad 20th century innit...

So how about inviting people to upload their own photos of freesheet newspapers wherever they see them? In the gutter, on the tube, on the bus, etc etc. They're everywhere!! If we try to get people to upload their photo's we could aim to collect 1.5 million or so. That's how many issues of these freesheets are being handed out every day.

Currently I have built a very basic website and need to start raising some funds in order to build a proper one. If I'm going to try to upload 1.5 million images from Londoners (though i guess they could come from further afield) then I need some pretty smart apps and programs to automate the whole process. And in case you didn't think 1.5 million images sounds like very many - 1.5 million photos equates to 200 images per day for 21 years!!

So, if you're interested, watch this space where I'll be updating my progress.

btw, any ideas or suggestions would be most welcome!!