Viral Epic Conservation Photographer Storyteller
In 2018, I received an email from Sagarmatha Next, an NGO in Nepal. They wanted to know if I might be interested in collaborating with them to use art to tackle the waste problem in the Everest region. At the time, Everest was getting a lot of negative press about becoming the world s tallest landfill [ ] The post How I ended up in Everest building a monument against trash appeared first on Von…
Normally when I think about climate change I feel an overwhelming sense of despair. Earth Overshoot Day the day we spend our carbon budget for the year gets closer every single year. But last year, I discovered a glimmer of hope. A glimmer, based on indigenous wisdom, to sequester carbon into the [ ] The post This phoenix is made from the average human’s carbon footprint (every year) appeared…
Ever since I built a four-story tall Giant Plastic Tap, spewing plastics all over the UN headquarters of the United Nations when the Global Plastics Treaty was signed, I ve received hundreds of requests to rebuild it worldwide. While it s been an honor to build these giant installations globally, I ve always dreamed of making a more [ ] The post A Cardboard Giant Plastic Tap free for Students!…
Did you know that 800 laptops worth of Electronic Waste are thrown away every second? The #1 reason: Exorbitant repair costs that keep people buying new. For decades, big tech companies have been fighting to restrict access to affordable repairs shutting down small independent repair shops and keeping us addicted to buying new. So when [ ] The post Unveiling the E-Waste Generator An immersive…
Did you know that a truckload of clothing is burned or landfilled every second? Over the last few years, the rise of fast fashion brands like H M and Zara has been rapidly overtaken by ultra-fast fashion brands like Shein, with anywhere between 2,000 and 10,000 designs added to their website Every. Single. Day. Despite more [ ] The post A Truckload of Fashion Greenwashing appeared first on Von…
Meet the Perpetual Plastic Machine a colossal 15-foot-tall art installation I created in collaboration with Greenpeace. This isn t your typical art piece that you d find in a museum. It s a giant, working machine that shows the toxic relationship between fossil fuels and plastic production and I decided to set it on fire with [ ] The post I Set My Art Installation on Fire: Stopping the Perpetual…
Everything we do online takes energy. A single google search? That takes 1080 Joules of energy*. Streaming an hour of Netflix? 288,000 Joules*. One Bitcoin transaction? A mindboggling 6,995,000,000 Joules.* Bitcoin is an energy monster, burning a ton of fossil fuels but it could disappear overnight if someone designed the right software update. Ethereum did [ ] The post I built an 11-foot skull…
During the cold war, the doomsday clock was a symbol and metaphor that was used to describe how close we were to mutually assured destruction. It served as a powerful and persistent reminder of how fragile our existence was. But when it comes to climate change, a similar symbol was never envisioned until now. [ ] The post 10 foot tall Extinction Thermometer highlighting the connection between…
A couple months ago, my good friend and data scientist Eric Berlow challenged me to explain the concept of Climate Equity through art. After throwing many different ideas around, we finally settled on making a diorama a three-dimensional charcoal drawing made from 22 different pieces of paper, drawn with the help of 16-year-old illustrator [ ] The post Explaining Climate Equity with Paper and…
Single-use plastic consumption has gone up by 250-300% during the pandemic. And with the United Nations Environmental Assembly coming together in February 2022 to discuss a global plastic treaty, we need to put pressure on world leaders to get the situation under control! As an artist and activist, I m always looking for exciting ways to make the [ ] The post This three story tall giant art…
After noticing that Corn looked like Skyscrapers, my mom asked if I could help her create a series of tiny world portraits of my 8-month old pregnant sister and her husband. My sister is a pretty adventurous lady but since the lockdowns began, we ve been all trapped so we decided to give her an adventure [ ] The post Impossible Maternity Photos with Fruits Vegetables appeared first on Von Wong…
Every single day, millions of plastic takeaway cups are used in food centers across the world. Receiving a takeaway cup, even when dining in has become so commonplace that we don t even think twice about how little sense it makes to use take-out cups within a dine-in setting. To help start that conversation, we [ ] The post This cosmic cave is an Instagram trap made from 18,000 used plastic cups…
It s just one straw, said 8 billion people. Sounds like a cliche little quote but these little things really do add up. Straws are virtually impossible to recycle in most places around the world because of how light and small they are. They re also one of the easiest products to turn down at a [ ] The post The Parting of the Plastic Sea an installation made from 168,000 used plastic straws…
My friend Laura is a social impact designer who has an unconventional passion for clothing. She realized long ago that we buy far more clothes than we need, simply because we can. Since then, she s been looking to find different ways to get people to fall in love with their clothing. Telling people to not buy more [ ] The post My Friend And I Built The World s Tallest Closet appeared first on Von…
Why throw plastics into the ocean? I can t speak for others but in our case, we decided to throw an entire truckload of plastic into the ocean after we learned about this shocking statistic: Every 60 seconds, the equivalent of a truckload of plastic enters the ocean. Although we were able to remove [ ] The post Every 60 Seconds, This Much Plastic Enters The Ocean. appeared first on Von Wong Blog .
10 years ago, this was a clothing factory that employed almost 5000 workers Once called the Tak Fat garment factory it is now being renovated and converted into a creative coworking space in Cambodia. When it went bankrupt in 2009, thousands and thousands of pounds of brand new clothes were abandoned. I m always hunting for [ ] The post Where are your clothes born? appeared first on Von Wong Blog…
Every single day, 142,000 computers are thrown away in the United States At least, that was the case in 2010. Electronic waste is the fastest growing municipal waste stream in the world. Today, that number is far higher and the only way to alleviate the situation is getting people to talk more about it. Unfortunately, e-waste [ ] The post 4100lbs of E-Waste resurrected. Trillions to go. appeared…
We have a big problem. Our tap water is being contaminated every single day. The laundry that we do every single day is the cause! 94% of American tap water contains invisible plastic fibers. Tiny plastic fibers in our clothing polyester, nylon, spandex to name a few escape every time we do our [ ] The post Did you know your laundry is toxic? These laundry monsters represent reality appeared first…