According to the National Statistics Institute, each Spanish person generates more than 480 kilos of rubbish a year, and this has a great environmental impact by destroying natural resources and polluting the sea, land, air, flora and fauna. Despite the drive and investment in the recycling industry in recent years, most of the waste we produce continues to end up as landfill, making awareness of reduction and reuse essential, in addition to recycling itself. However, despite the efforts of independent and governmental initiatives, we humans continue to produce waste in disconcerting amounts.
The Waste Wastes project, premiered by the German collective Mentalgassi at Getxophoto, addresses a topic as serious and complex as that of waste. To do this, they make each person’s rubbish production visible, by fixing faces on bags scattered around the streets of the city. The trio of street artists, with a long history in urban intervention, focus their attention on one of the fundamental environmental problems today, emphasizing the large amount of waste that each person generates every day.