Environmentalists in Indonesia have created a museum made entirely from plastic in an attempt to send a message about the worsening ocean plastic crisis.
Located in the town of Gresik in Indonesia’s East Java province, the museum took three months to build and is made up of more than 10,000 plastic waste items, including bottles, straws and plastic bags, collected from polluted beaches and rivers.
A statue of Dewi Sri, a goddess of prosperity worshipped by the Javanese, constructed from single-use plastics, including single-use sachets of household items, serves as the museum’s centrepiece
The exhibition, which aims to encourage visitors to rethink their shopping habits and opt for reusable items rather than single-use plastics, has received more than 400 visitors since its opening.
The museum has also gained popularity on social media, with visitors sharing selfies taken against a backdrop of thousands of suspended water bottles.
“We want to send information to the people to stop the use of single-use plastic,” said the museum’s founder Prigi Arisandi.
“These plastics are very difficult to recycle. Starting today, we should stop consuming single-use plastic because it will pollute our ocean, which is also our source of food.”
Indonesia, an archipelago nation in Southeast Asia, ranks second in the world behind China for its volume of plastic that ends up in the oceans and is one of four nations - together with China, Vietnam and the Philippines - responsible for more than half of the plastic currently in the oceans. Efforts to regulate the use of plastic packaging has had mixed results.
Museum founder Prigi Arisandi created the museum to raise awareness around the ocean plastic crisis CREDIT: REUTERS
The museum has become popular on social media, with visitors sharing selfies against a backdrop of thousands of plastic water bottles CREDIT: REUTERS
